


Death in Paradise

by queer_cheer



Series: The Adventures of River Song [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Brief mention of homophobia, Dark Comedy, F/M, Horror, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Murder Mystery, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, brief mention of racism, references to river's backstory, references to the doctor's backstory, there's gonna be some gore and blood but nothing over-the-top!, whodunit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22255138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: Bluewood Manor is a remote get-away for couples on holiday, situated neatly in the scenic Bluewood Forest. The Doctor and River plan to settle in for the weekend, but with strange sounds coming from the walls and terrifying faces appearing in mirrors, a grisly murder mystery might be the least of their worries.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song
Series: The Adventures of River Song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582024
Comments: 60
Kudos: 54





	1. The Bluewood Forest

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone! thanks so much for reading the first fic in the series, The Dancing Skies of Verath! This fic is sorta of a sequel to that story, but it can be read as a stand-alone fic! Updates might be a little slower this time, since uni has started up again and I'm also a professional writer with ~real world projects~ to work on, too, but the fic is already written; i've just gotta make the time to post the chapters haha. Comments and kudos might encourage me to work a bit quicker ;) 
> 
> hope you enjoy!!

“Doctor, I’ve told you,” said River sternly, her hands on her hips. “I don’t like surprises!”

Historically, surprises have tried to kill her. She told him this, and he laughed.

“You, River Song, worry too much,” the Doctor pressed a kiss to her temple. She could tell they were flying somewhere around Centaurus A, but the specifics were a bit tricky, especially with a TARDIS that sometimes couldn’t tell left from right, and a pilot who liked to mixed up the two on purpose. 

“I worry a fine amount, sweetie,” she assured. “Are we there yet?” 

“Oi, you’re worse your mum and dad with the impatience.”

She snorted. He’d be impatient too if he’d just spent the last twelve hours in a cell staring at a wall. 

“We’re landing now!” he flipped a lever and the TARDIS let out a roar. River nearly fell over. Gently, she gave the console a soothing pat.

“He doesn’t treat you right, does he?” she cooed. “A bit chaotic on the landings, eh?” 

“You and the TARDIS will have to save the girl talk for later,” the Doctor teased, grabbing a pair of overnight bags. In his best mock-GPS voice, he said, “We have reached our destination.” 

She let him lead her outside, and she found herself standing in a forest. But it wasn’t just any forest, and it wasn't made of just any trees. They reached up toward a starry nighttime sky, hundreds of feet in the air, their trunks as wide as cars. And the best part? They were blue. As blue as the sea, as blue as the sky, as blue as whatever you’d like. Instead of leaves, they had bulbs that glowed and shimmered like diamonds in the moonlight, like a hundred tiny moons floating up above them.

River let out a stunned gasp, and her breath shone silver in the cold. 

“The Bluewood Forest,” the Doctor draped his coat over her shoulders. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” she turned to kiss him, and for once, he hadn’t wandered off. He pressed a practised kiss to her lips and tucked a curl behind her ear. 

“And up ahead, there’s Bluewood Manor,” he told her. “It’s known as one of the best places in the galaxy to just get away from it all for awhile. Lovely vintage Earth aesthetic, with record players and old television sets, and those ugly rugs you like so much.” 

River laughed. “How thoughtful.” 

“See!” He gestured broadly, grinning. “Some surprises aren’t bad! Some surprises don’t try to kill you!”

“Famous last words,” River joked. “C’mon, let’s go see that lodge!” 

It was just up ahead, a grand old building made of brick, with wisps of smoke puffing out of a chimney. The archaeologist -- or perhaps the time traveler -- in her recognised the Victorian architecture, like a glorious dollhouse with sash windows, elaborate trim, a grand wrap-around porch, and a steeped Mansard roof. She reckoned it was big enough for a handful of lodgers, but small enough to feel intimate, and as she eyed the Doctor, she knew intimate is exactly what she wanted. 

***

The estate’s manager was named Tom, according to his nameplate, and he could’ve been specifically created to do the job he does. He wore a butler’s suit and a smile that never seemed to waver, and the moment the pair stepped inside, he was rushing to help them with their luggage. 

“Oh, welcome, welcome!” He cheered, shaking both of their hands with a little too much zeal for River’s taste. “Welcome to Bluewood Manor! You must be the Doctor. What brings you lovely couple onto our humble estate?” 

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but River beat him to it. 

“You see, I’ve just broken out of prison and my husband is a 1,000-year-old demigod running from his actual responsibilities, so we thought we’d just pop off for a quick shag someplace nice.” 

Tom laughed in the kind of way they taught you to laugh in management training. Clearly, he thought she was joking, and she wasn’t. Not a word was untrue. Not. A. Word. 

The Doctor turned every shade of pink ever seen, and elbowed River in the ribs. 

“Oi, act like a person, please!” 

“I’ll show you to your room.” Tom started up the steps -- an ornate spiral staircase carpeted with the exact kind of ugly carpet that River liked so much. “There’s a common lounge with a buffet that I think you’ll find to your liking; the other lodgers have given it raving reviews. Each room has a personal balcony with a view of the forest.” 

“You know,” the Doctor nudged River. “They say if you listen very hard, you can hear the trees talking to each other.” 

“That’s silly,” said Tom, a bit too quickly. “Trees don’t speak.” 

The Doctor huffed. “Maybe you just don’t listen hard enough.” 

River took his hand. 

“Act like a person, please,” she smirked. The Doctor rolled his eyes. 

Tom paused before a door marked with the number three and handed the Doctor an old skeleton key. As he gestured for them to enter the room, his sleeve rolled up, and River caught sight of some rather nasty scars. 

They’d been burns, once, but now, they were all healed up, permanent ridges and dips in the skin of his forearm. She briefly wondered what sort of life he’d led before becoming the manager of the estate. If she got bored later, she’d make up a story about him in her head.

“All of the main entrances and exits are electronic to ensure safety, but this key emits a magnetic signal that opens them as you walk by. It’s all part of our rustic theme,” Tom explained with pride. Delighted, the Doctor grinned.

“I love a good skeleton key! Old fashioned, and it gets the job done!” 

River strode into the room, feeling a bit like the title character in some old Oscar Wilde play. She loved to read, and the thought of it pulled her attention to a bookshelf stocked to the brim with all the classics. The bed, tucked against the wall, was large and comfortable, with fluffy pillows and a purple down comforter. There was a spacious bathroom off to the side of the bedroom with a clawfoot tub she intended to make full use of, but what caught her attention most was the wide French door leading to the balcony Tom had mentioned. 

She made her way toward it and stepped outside. It was starting to snow, and in the glow of the trees, she watched tiny flakes fall to the earth. It was like the world was writing her a poem. She couldn’t wait to put it in her journal later on.

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she jumped. 

“Sorry,” the Doctor said softly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

River relaxed at the sight of him, leaning in as he wrapped an arm around her. In the bedroom, she could hear faint piano music playing from a vinyl turntable situated on the nightstand. The Doctor cupped her cheek and smiled at the love reflected in her eyes. He was lucky, he thought. Very, very lucky. 

“This is beautiful,” she sighed. The house was nice, yes, but the trees really made her eyes get all misty. She loved nature. Nature was the one thing that never tried to hurt anyone on purpose -- with the exception of the vine snakes on that weird party planet somewhere in the Sirius star cluster. Those things were just plain menacing. But overall, there was something innocent about a forest. Something long lost and ever found.

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, eyeing not the trees, but rather his wife. “It is beautiful.” 

Every time she thought she couldn’t love him any more than she already did, he proved her wrong. The smug bastard. He loved proving everyone wrong about everything.

She took his hand and pulled him back inside, pushing him down onto the bed. Tom had left. That was good, she thought. He sort of gave her the creeps, and he was just about the last person she wanted to think about now.

“Nice bed, comfortable bed,” the Doctor babbled. “Big pillows, and whatnot. Purple blanket. I like purple.” 

“Mhmm.” 

“It isn’t bedtime, eh?” 

“Nope.” 

River joined him in bed and pressed a kiss to his jaw, managing to pull his bowtie undone in one easy tug. 

“Is that a sonic screwdriver or are you just glad to see me?” she teased, pulling the sonic from his pocket and pressing a button. The door slammed shut and the blinds quickly closed. The Doctor stared at her with the kind of doe-eyed anticipation that let her know he was eagerly giving himself up to her, and that she was fully in charge of this particular endeavour. 

Perfect.

River smiled and unzipped her dress.


	2. Knock, Knock

The Doctor was never much for sleeping. He did, when he had to, but even then, it took him awhile to stop thinking long enough to doze off. Usually, he’d try to think about something boring, like applied quantum mechanics, but then he just ends up thinking about electron dynamics in solids or creation and annihilation operators, or more frequently and entirely unrelated, what really made fast food so fast. And by the time he realises he’d been thinking so hard he’d forgotten to sleep, he’s already too stressed about the secret universe of the dining industry to even think about sleeping.

That was how it usually went down. But it was different tonight, he thought. He was tired -- a rare thing for him -- and he was comfortable. With his head against River’s chest and her hand resting lightly on the back of his neck, he’d counted her heartbeats until he’d felt relaxation lull his heavy eyes shut. But he’d teeter there, on the cusp of sleep and wake, and something would bring him back, taking his brain and giving it a little shake. River seemed unbothered. She slept soundly beside him, her breath even and calm. 

_Tap! Tap! Tap!_

The Doctor stirred. It wasn’t uncommon to hear strange sounds when you were half-asleep, right? It was sort of like that feeling you’d get when you’re laying in bed and suddenly feel like you’re falling. Normal. Everything about Bluewood Manor was perfectly normal. 

He sighed. Usually if he’d gotten to the point of telling himself that, he knew it wasn’t true. 

_Tap, tap, tap!_

He sat up. He’d definitely heard that! 

_Tap! Tap! Tap!_

Yes, it was real, and it was coming from the wood-paneled wall behind their headboard. It was a sharp and deliberate sound, lacking both the chaos of rattling pipes and the steadiness of a drip. It was almost like a knock, but not quite round enough. It sounded, to him, like a fingernail drumming against the inside of the wall. 

“River,” he whispered. 

_Tap, tap, tap!_

River could sleep through the end of the world, and he knew that waking her up before she was ready just might bring about the apocalypse sooner rather than later. 

But she did so love a good mystery. 

“River,” he whispered again, more pointed this time. He put his head back on her chest and gave her cheek a poke. “River, wake up.” 

She muttered something incoherent and gently swatted his hand away. 

“C’mon, listen, do you hear that?” 

“Sleep,” she slurred, and it was a command. “Go to sleep.” 

“You can sleep later for as long as you’d like. But right now, listen!” 

“The only thing I hear, sweetie, is you talking. Shhh,” she pressed a finger to his lips. “Sleep time for River Song.” 

_Tap! Tap! Tap tap tap! Tap!_

“And if you don’t stop with that bloody knocking, Doctor, I’ll--” 

“It isn’t me!”

River opened one eye and glanced at him. 

“What do you mean? Of course it’s you. It isn’t me.” 

To prove his innocence, the Doctor held up both of his hands. 

“How could I be tapping if all ten of my fingers are accounted for?” 

There was a joke in there that would make him blush, but River was far too tired to make it. 

“Pipes,” she said.

“Too rhythmic.” 

“A drip, then.” 

“Not rhythmic enough.” 

Rubbing her eyes, River groaned. The Doctor really had a wonderful imagination, and most of the time, River found it endearing. He was brilliant for telling stories around a campfire, and he wrote the most marvelous fiction. But right now, she just wanted to sleep, and she was ready to tell him exactly that when she heard voices coming from the hall. Arguing. Rather heated, too.

“What do you reckon that is?” the Doctor sat up straight and listened. “You might not think the tapping is anything, but that’s certainly something.” 

“Yeah,” River sat up, too, a bit less than delighted. “I’d say that’s certainly something.” 

The Doctor passed her her robe, and then scampered over to the door. He pressed his ear against it, and dissatisfied with how much he couldn’t hear, he slipped out into the hall and becked for River to follow after him.

***

Max and Oscar Rivera had been minding their own business. They were rather good at that, really; Max never liked people, and frankly, they frightened him. He was frightened of almost everything, which is why he chose to study plants.

Plants rarely said hurtful things, or acted unpredictably, or stole family heirlooms to make a quick buck on some pawn ship somewhere south of Neptune. No, humans did all those things. Maybe that’s why he struggled so much to understand his own family, his own siblings, his own kind. He didn’t really even understand Oscar, his loud-mouthed and passionate husband, but he loved him, and love was just one of those things in the universe he’d accepted he’d never fully grasp.

“What do you think of the trees?” Oscar asked him. They were sitting in the main lobby, sipping tea and staring out the window at the glowing blue forest. It was their fifth wedding anniversary, and Oscar had wanted to do something nice. 

Max beamed. “Oh, they’re brilliant! Did you know that the bluewood trees grew a millenia ago after an asteroid hit the planet? The spores that made the seeds that made the trees came from someplace very, very far away -- we haven’t ever been able to find out where!”

Oscar smiled wide. He loved seeing Max so excited. “No, love, I didn’t know that.” He did, of course. He’d read it in the travel brochure. 

“And that means if you cut down the trees, they’ll never grow back.” 

Oscar thought for a moment. “The trees don’t produce their own seeds?” 

Oscar might’ve looked like a high school gym teacher, but he was a biologist specialising in horticulture, and while he didn’t know quite as much as Max the dendrologist, he knew enough. 

“That bit’s tricky,” Max explained. “There are two types of trees, you know. Gymnosperms or angiosperms. Gymnosperms produce their seeds at the tip of their branches, like pinecones, but angiosperms produce them inside a casing or fruit, like acorns. The bluewood trees are gymnosperms; their glowing bulbs are their seeds, but they glow because they contain phosphors. And when those phosphors…” 

Oscar had stopped listening. He was smiling and nodding to make Max happy, but the truth was that he just didn’t want to spend his holiday thinking about work. And so he put his arm around his husband and let him talk. Lord knew he’d be going on for awhile. 

On a couch in the opposite corner of the same room sat Hex and Ulra. They were the sort of couple that turned heads, though they always just assumed it was because of their impeccable fashion sense. It had never occurred to them that it was actually because Hex was probably the first Sontaran to fall in love with a Silurian, and Ulra was probably the first Silurian to love him back.

They’d met at Resus 1, a 67th-century hospital floating about in space. Neither could remember how they’d gotten there, and both were gravely injured. Hex’s wound had taken his ability to speak, and Ulra’s, her ability to sleep soundly through the night. The only thing worse than being haunted by bad memories was being haunted by something you couldn’t remember at all. But Hex made her feel safe. 

Her sketchbook was open in her lap, and she was drawing a picture of the trees. Drawing helped ground her, to make her feel in control. 

Hex tapped her arm. She looked over at him, and using his best Standardized Intergalactic Sign Language (SISL), he told her, “You draw with the passion of a mighty warrior.” 

“Thank you,” she smiled kindly. “It’s strange. This place feels like it knows me. Like I’ve been here before. Like an old friend.” She shook her head. What a silly thought. 

They’d come to Bluewood Manor because Ulra loved nature, and any place they could get away from the hustle and bustle of The City was bound to do them a world of good. 

When Geoff and Georgine (Gigi) Faris entered the lobby, they were offended that no one looked up. They came from the planet Tyche, a homeworld for the lucky. It was said that you had to have a certain net worth to even live on Tyche; those who weren’t worth enough would be gently told to find another place to go, and then never heard from again. But even though people were quite fond of telling Geoff and Gigi to get lost, it had never been because they lacked any number of credits. Rather, it was usually because they were completely and utterly insufferable.

“It’s absurd, really,” said Gigi, giving her feather boa a dramatic toss around her neck. “They’ll just let anyone in here these days.” 

She was speaking loudly enough to turn heads, and it was very much intentional. 

“I’ll say,” agreed Geoff. He had a mousy little moustache stuck to his upper lip, and wirey hair that sort of gave up near the middle of his scalp. His suit was worth more than the spacecraft they’d flown in on, and it wasn’t even his best.

“When we got together, marriage meant something!” Gigi lamented. “But now, creatures from all across the universe merge in these...alternative lifestyles,” she cringed as if the word physically pained her to say. “It simply shouldn’t be allowed.” 

“Oi!” called Oscar. Max touched his arm. 

“Oscar, don’t.” 

“They don’t have the right to talk about us that way!” he stood up, and suddenly, all eyes in the room were on him. He sort of liked it. He’d fought his way through school in his youth, sending bullies running home to their mums. He rather fancied himself the Robin Hood of South Yorkshire, and some things never quite change. 

“We could buy the rights to whatever we please,” said Geoff coldly. “We’re entitled to an opinion.” 

“Bigotry isn’t an opinion,” Hex signed, and Ulra translated it aloud.

“Oh, Geoff, how silly!” Gigi laughed, and it sounded somehow like nails scraping a chalkboard. “The lizard girl’s husband is shaped like a thumb!” 

“Don’t talk about him that way!” Ulra shouted. “You haven’t the right to treat anyone so poorly. We’ve paid our way here just as you have!” 

“Yeah,” Oscar agreed. “If you’ve got a problem, you ought to just stay home.” 

Geoff approached him slowly and smugly, and though he was smiling, Oscar knew enough about the universe to know that sometimes a smile was just something with teeth. They stood at about the same height, though Oscar’s curls gave him a slight advantage, and Geoff gave Oscar’s cheek a condescending pat. And then, Geoff spat in his face. 

And then the room was chaos. 

Max leapt up to restrain Oscar, who’s vision had gone red around the edges. 

“I’ll kill you, you bastard!” Oscar shouted. 

Geoff stepped just out of his reach, and Max tightened his hold on him. 

“It’s just like I always tell you, Geoff,” Gigi hissed. “Their kind, humans, they just aren't as evolved as us. Lower intelligence, more prone to violence!” 

Oscar was shouting about bigotry and rights, and Max was shouting for peace. Gigi was shouting that some young brute was trying to attack her husband, and Geoff was shouting about how kids these days just didn’t seem to respect their elders like they used to. Ulra had gotten involved, and she was shouting, too. Everyone was just shouting, their voices turning each other inside out until it all devolved into noise. 

River and the Doctor stepped out of their bedroom and into the mess. Of course they’d gotten the room right off the lobby -- all the others were down a corridor.

“What the hell is going on?” River asked him. He shook his head.

“I have no idea.” 

“Can I see your sonic?” 

Hesitantly, the Doctor handed it to her. “Why?” 

“Cover your ears.” 

He did, and for some reason, he shut his eyes, too. 

River pressed a button on the sonic, and it honked like a deafening air horn. The room fell into a shocked silence. 

“Can’t a girl get some sleep around here!?” she barked. 

“At least there’s one proper couple here,” muttered Gigi. “A man and a woman, homogenous, heterosexual.” 

The Doctor uncovered his ears and opened his eyes. 

“That’s a stupid thing to say,” he accused, taken aback.

“And presumptuous,” River added. “We’re both muts, us. I’m human with a bit of Time Lord, and he’s Time Lord with a bit of human. And that bit about heterosexuality?” River laughed. “As if! We’ve both just come from a bisexual alien sex party for charity, which was funded on the taxpayer’s dollar, and all proceeds benefit your least favourite intergalactic women’s health organisation.”

There was a pause, and then Oscar laughed. Slowly, the Doctor, Max, Ulra, and Hex joined in. It was clear that River was kidding -- about the sex party, at least. But the joke went over Geoff and Gigi’s heads, and for a moment, it looked as though Gigi might faint. 

“The impropriety!” she cried, flailing dramatically into her husband’s arms. Geoff had turned a particular shade of green. 

“What is going on here!?” Tom appeared in the foyer, arms crossed over his chest. He looked a bit like a parent who had caught his kid with their hand in the cookie jar. “This is not the sound of happy mingling!” 

“These people!” Gigi rushed toward Tom and took his hand. “They’re animals!” 

“Oi, her bloke spat in my face!” 

“I did no such thing!” Geoff’s chest puffed, indignant. 

“Did too!” Max hissed. 

“Oh, sir, it’s my word against the word of some--” 

River hit the button on the sonic again, and it screeched. Everyone fell silent, and Geoff turned to glare at her. She waved politely. Grinning, the Doctor held up his hand, and River high-fived him. 

“I don’t care who started it,” Tom growled. “This is a place of business, not a daycare!” 

“Sir, aren’t daycares also technically a place of business?” Oscar asked innocently. Max groaned. Tom’s eyes narrowed into a glare. 

“Back to your rooms,” he ordered. “I hope that a good night’s sleep will remind you to act with dignity and poise.” 

One by one, everyone filed out.

“You’re funny,” Oscar said to River as he passed her. 

“I know,” River smiled pleasantly. “It’s the trauma.” 

She and the Doctor returned to their room, both too awake and riled up for bed. 

“I can’t believe they were so cruel!” the Doctor shook his head. “Almost every civilisation has left behind their closed-mindedness to embrace diversity and new ideas.” 

“There’s always going to be idiots, sweetie,” she began to collect things for a bath. “At least their generation will die soon.” 

The Doctor almost chastised her, but he decided she was technically right, and so he kept his mouth shut. 

“You’re going to take a bath?” he asked her. 

“Yep. Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone,” she blew him a kiss before slinking into the bathroom and shutting the door. He sat on the bed, listening to the sound of running water. Without River, the bedroom was rather boring, and so he stepped out onto the patio.

The night’s air was cool and crisp. It smelt like winter, with the cool bite of snow on his cheeks. The beauty of the forest was almost enough to ease his nerves, but not quite. He was still thinking about the tapping in the wall. He was missing something, and he had no idea what. 

He took a breath and inhaled a mouthful of cigarette smoke. Coughing, he leaned over his balcony to see Oscar standing out on his, smoking away. 

“Oh, hello!” He called, waving excitedly. Oscar looked up, confused, and then gave him a playful salute. 

“Hello.” 

“What’s your name? Mine is the Doctor.” 

“Oscar,” he introduced. “I’m a doctor, too. Biology. What are you a doctor of?” 

The Doctor’s smile widened. What a fun question!

“Oh, you know,” he shrugged. “Medicine, maths, cheese-making. But mostly cheese-making. And, on occasion, parties.” 

Oscar laughed. “You’re weird, mate. But I like weird. You’ve got the funny wife, yeah?” 

“Oh, yeah,” the Doctor leaned over the rail. “Mind if I come down there? It’s a bit tricky, this.” 

Oscar didn’t have the time to ask what exactly he meant. The Doctor was already climbing down over his balcony, and the next thing he knew, he was standing next to him. The Doctor extended his hand, and after tucking his cigarette between his lips, Oscar shook it. He might as well roll with it, he figured. Weird blokes usually made the best kind of friends.

“Want one?” Oscar offered him a cigarette from the pack, and with a shrug, the Doctor took it. It was one thing in the universe he’d never tried before, and he figured he’d try anything twice -- in case the first time was a fluke. 

“Pretty awful interaction in there,” the Doctor said. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Are you alright?” 

Oscar held out his lighter, and the Doctor took it. 

“It’s alright,” he shrugged. “Max and I are fine. That’s my husband, Max. More angry than anything. I feel like I played into a stereotype by shouting and all that. That’s how people like that back you right up into a corner.” 

“I understand,” the Doctor lit his cigarette, and immediately felt like he was dying. He doubled over, coughing and gagging. “You do this for fun!?” He glared at the cigarette, stubbing it out against the rail. “It’s evil, that.” 

Oscar laughed. “It’s not for everyone.” 

“Back to what you said,” the Doctor scrubbed his tongue with his sleeve and grimaced at the aftertaste. “You didn’t play into any stereotypes; you had a right to get angry. You and all the others, too.” 

He heard a door slide open to his left, and out stepped Ulra. 

“Speaking of the others!” the Doctor waved at her. “Hello! I’m the Doctor, and this is Oscar!” 

Ulra looked as though she didn’t want to talk to anyone, but she smiled politely and waved. 

“My name is Ulra.” 

“Lovely name,” the Doctor smiled. “Are you alright?” 

Ulra sat down and pulled out her sketchbook. 

“Why do you care?” 

The Doctor’s smile faded. “Because I’m the Doctor,” he told her. “It’s my job to check-up.” 

Hex emerged from his room to sit beside Ulra. He eyed the Doctor with suspicion, and then signed to Ulra, “Are these strangers upsetting you?” 

Ulra shook her head. “It isn’t the strangers,” she signed back. Yes, she could speak and he could hear, but it was like their secret code. “It’s the noises.” 

“Noises?” 

That piqued the Doctor’s interest. Ulra looked at him, shocked. 

“I understand SISL,” he really thought he was being accommodating rather than intrusive. “I understand everything. I heard some strange sounds, too. Like a tapping in the walls.” 

“We heard that,” Oscar admitted. “I thought it was mice or something, but Max said it couldn’t be. It was--” 

“Too precise,” Ulra said quickly. All eyes turned to her. “We heard it, too. Strange, isn’t it? I was worried I’d gone mad.” 

“You aren’t mad, Ulra,” the Doctor smiled kindly. “You know how I know?” 

“How?” 

“Mad people never stop to ask if they’ve gone mad.” 

Ulra had never looked at it that way before. Oddly, it made sense. She relaxed in a way she hadn’t in awhile. Maybe she should’ve seen a doctor a long time ago.

“We’ve all heard the same sound?” the Doctor leaned against the railing and thought for a moment. “What do you think that means?” 

“That none of us are mad,” Ulra affirmed. The Doctor nodded.

“Yes, yes, but what else? I’m missing something. But what is it?”


	3. The Maid in the Mirror

River loved a good bath. It was sort of gross, if you thought about it long enough -- marinating naked in a hot bin of water -- but she decided to simply not think about it long enough. It was relaxing, gross or not.

She hoped misfortune found the two miserable old hags that had given everyone so much trouble. She didn’t believe in karma, really -- karma was just revenge, but anonymous -- and she didn’t believe that the universe was innately just. But because of what she regarded as life’s concrete placidity, people tended to take justice into their own hands. One day, she figured those two idiots would say the wrong thing to the kind of person that didn’t mind decking and old lady.

It was a pleasant thought, but she decided not to think about that, either. She’d given them something to wonder about with her little quip, and she hoped it had really bothered them. That was her win for the day. 

She’d lit four candles around the edge of the tub -- she wanted it to look as different from the communal showers at Stormcage as it possibly could. She was on a completely different planet in a completely different galaxy, but she still didn’t feel far enough away. She shut her eyes and sunk deeper into the water, doing her best to clear her head and let the gentle ambiance lull her into a state of calm. She was with the Doctor now, and there wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be. 

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. And not in a good way. 

The bathroom was large, and beyond the light of her candles, there were only shadows. She knew how the light could play tricks, and so when she swore she saw something move through the darkness, she gave her eyes a good rub and shook her head. This, she thought, was why sleep is so important. Without it, the demons of nightmares tended to bleed out into reality. But that’s all they were, she told herself. Bad dreams. 

But then she heard something, too; it was like a scurry or a scamper, like something small and fast making its way around through the walls. She thought again of the tapping sounds the Doctor had heard, and she suddenly regretted dismissing him so quickly.

“It’s just mice,” she told herself, plucking the plug out of the bath and reaching for her towel.

Three of her candles went out.

“Mice that can blow out candles,” her pulse quickened and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck start to stand up. “We’ve seen stranger things, right? Oh, of course we have. Mice that can blow out candles? That’s nothing compared to Daleks or Cybermen.” 

With her towel wrapped around her, she made her way over to the sink, holding the last remaining candle tightly in her hands. The room felt larger, deeper, and darker, but she’d laughed in the face of men who held knives to her throat. She refused to run out of the room like a frightened child. She was River Song!

With the intention of affirming her identity as a fearless heroine (and confirming that there was nothing standing behind her), she looked into the mirror hanging above the sink, but the reflection staring back was enough to knock the breath from her lungs.

It was ghastly and horrid, like a creature pulled from the attic of some horror-fiction writer’s mind. Its skin was green and blistered, with round open sores leaking yellow pus. Dislodged from battered sockets, its bloodshot eyes hung on by optic nerves, dilated pupils lolling lazily to the side. A black tongue slopped out of a mouth that was too large for its head, and as a hand reached out to touch the glass, an overgrown fingernail scraped its surface like knives on a chalkboard. And then it started to tap against it. 

_Tap, tap, tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap, tap, tap!_

“What are you?” she asked it, leaning in toward the monster. Her breath fogged up the mirror, and she suddenly noticed that the creature’s didn’t seem to have any effect on the glass. “You’re not breathing. What’s that tapping mean?” 

River reached up to touch the mirror, half-expecting her hand to sink right through, like a portal. But instead, she felt a squishy, film-like surface where there should’ve been glass. If she pushed hard enough, she figured she could’ve broken through it, but that seemed rather intrusive, and she and the creature had really only just met.

For a moment, the creature paused. She wondered if it had expected her to run. Where normal people would’ve been terrified, River was intrigued. It began again with the knocking, the same, rhythmic pattern, over and over again. 

“Doctor, look at this!” She called out. It was the same sound he’d heard while in bed. He’d love to see this.

But he didn’t answer. River groaned. She should’ve known he’d wander off. 

The creature made a sound caught halfway between a gargle and a growl. It might’ve been trying to speak, but its body wasn’t made to make sound any more than a tree’s was to make light. But in deep space, anything could happen.

“Are you trying to scare me?” she smiled. “It’s gonna take a lot more than an ugly face and a couple of groans, mate.”

She lifted the candle up, casting the creature in its glow. It recoiled, and River lowered the flame.

“Don’t like fire, eh? I don’t blame you. Nasty stuff.” 

And then she did what every nerve in her body told her not to do, which is why she decided to do it in the first place: she blew the candle out.

Alone in the dark with a ghastly maiden in the mirror. Just an average Friday. What could possibly go wrong?

She heard it keep on with the tapping, and it seemed to be getting louder. It wasn’t trying to attack her. It wasn’t trying to hurt her. It was trying to tell her something, but she didn’t know what.

The bathroom door swung open, flooding the room with light. In the doorway, the Doctor stood, looking at her with a quizzical expression.

“What are you doing?” 

River turned back toward the mirror, eager to show him what she’d seen, but the creature had gone. She touched it. Glass. Normal.

“I know this looks odd,” River set the spent candle down in the sink. “But I promise, it’s much weirder.” 

In the bedroom, she told him all about the creature, and he hung onto every word.

“Could you draw it?” 

River blinked. “Why?” 

“So I can see what it looks like!” 

“I just told you what it looks like!” 

“Yes, but that’s the tricky bit about telling people things! When you say green, how do I know we have the same concept of green? I might be picturing something completely different! Red, for example.” 

River groaned. “You’re difficult, sweetie.” 

“I’ll get you paper!”

He darted out of the room, leaning over the balcony and calling down to Ulra, who sat out on her porch sketching the trees. 

“Oi! Borrow some paper?” He smiled kindly. “I’m more of a painter myself, but canvas is tricky to travel with!” 

After a hesitant pause, Ulra tore a sheet out of her sketchbook and held it up to him. Straining, he managed to reach it, call out a polite thank you, and rush it inside to River.

“It doesn’t have to be a good drawing,” he reassured her. “But just something so I can know what we’re facing, here.” 

“I’m a brilliant artist,” she told him. It wasn’t a brag, but a fact. “It’ll be a brilliant drawing.” 

And she got to work. 

***

By the time she was finished, the sun was beginning to come up. She turned to show the Doctor her work -- a hauntingly realistic drawing of the monster in the mirror -- but he was drooling into a pillow, arms tucked ineloquently under his head and his legs bent at angles that only he could find comfortable. She smiled fondly. She’d show him later. In the meantime, she laid down beside him, snatching a bit of blanket from his cocoon and tucking herself in. Secure in the safety of daylight, she drifted to sleep.

The Doctor was dreaming.

He took a step, and his shoes sank into the marshy forest floor. He wasn’t wearing the clothes he’d fallen asleep in; in their place was a traditional Time Lord mourner’s gown. It was ornate, loose-fitting, and very, very blue -- the color of mourning on Gallifrey and most other planets across the universe. The light of the bluewood trees only enhanced his outfit’s rich colour and called attention to the glistening black sequins on his collar. What was he mourning? Who had he lost?

Above him, the ancient bluewood trees shimmered; they were the only light in the forest. The sky had gone dark; the Doctor was skilled at celestial navigation, but without the stars to mark his path, he was lost. And alone. And quite frightened. 

He didn’t know why he was afraid. A walk in the forest hadn’t ever killed anyone. Well, that couldn’t have been true. He was sure plenty of people died lost and alone in forests all across the universe. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be written into the DNA of every living thing to fear the woods. 

But that was not a happy thought. 

He knew he was looking for something. He didn’t know how he knew or what he needed to find, but something told him he’d know once he came to it. He took another step, and was suddenly aware that something was behind him. A cold breeze erected gooseflesh along his arms. Maybe something was looking for him, too.

Okay, he thought. On three, he’ll look.

One.

Two.

He turned on his heels, and not an inch from his face, it was standing there. The Doctor sucked in a sharp gasp, but resisted the urge to run. It wasn’t its fault that it was ugly. Maybe it didn’t know it was terrifying to look at. Maybe where it came from, it was beautiful. 

“Hello,” he greeted. “Nice night for a walk, eh? I was hoping you could tell me where the stars have gone.” 

It was silent. The Doctor let out a nervous laugh. 

“I’m looking for something,” he fidgeted with his hands, eventually trying to tuck them into his pocket and frowning when he realised the gown hadn’t any. No pocket, no sonic. 

But if he didn’t have his sonic, that meant this wasn’t just a dream. He always had his sonic in his dreams.

“I’m not dreaming,” he muttered to himself, or maybe to the creature. “But I’m certainly still asleep. Not a dream, then, but a vision. Are you trying to tell me something? Pull details from my subconscious to deliver a message?” 

The wind blew again. This time, it carried the haunting voices of children singing to the tune of London Bridges. 

_Gallifrey has fallen down, fallen down, fallen down. Gallifrey has fallen down, my fair lady._

The Doctor swallowed.

“You know who I am, then,” his voice shook. “You know what I am. What I’ve done.” _What I’ve lost._

The creature lifted a skeletal hand, pointing a sharp, yellow fingernail up toward the trees. 

The wind blew again, and the children’s choir sang once more. The Doctor felt tugs at his robe, the approximate size and shape of a child’s hand. He swallowed down the lump forming in his throat and redirected his attention to the creature standing before him. 

_Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all._

The Doctor traced its gesture upward. All he could see were the glowing limbs of the bluewood trees, but they were fading fast, buzzing like a spent bulb in a car park. For a terrible moment, he feared they might pop.

“I’m in a mourner’s robe,” he muttered. “But what am I mourning?” The obvious answer had sang him songs -- it was the same thing he’d been mourning for centuries. But the creature hadn’t pulled him from his sleep to give him a vision of something he’d always known. He had to look deeper. There was a message buried in between the obvious and the probable.

The very same tapping he’d heard in bed earlier was back, only this time, it was louder, as if something from within every tree in the forest was knocking out a message. 

_Tap, tap, tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap, tap, tap!_

“I should've known that was you. But I don't quite understand,” the Doctor admitted, turning back toward the creature with a pleading look. “If you need help, I want to help you! But I don’t know how, because I don’t…” he trailed off. The gears in his head were turning so fast he swore he could smell smoke. The knocking was the same rhythm, the same repeated series of taps and tuts, over and over again, and it was getting louder. Louder. Louder. The Doctor dropped to his knees and covered his ears. It had to mean something! But what?

“Think, Doctor, think,” he grit his teeth. “A mourning gown. Blue. Children. Loss. C’mon, Doctor, be clever. It’s a puzzle, or a code. A code!” He opened his eyes and stood up so fast it made him dizzy. “Morse Code! Three short knocks, three slow knocks, three short ones again! It’s a distress call! SOS!”

The figure vanished in a wisp of smoke, and the light of the forest went out.

The Doctor sat up fast and took a deep breath. He was back in the bedroom. Rays of golden light slipped in from the window, and beside him, River snored. Discarded on the bed between them was her drawing of a creature with eyes dangling from their sockets and blood dribbling out of open wounds. A mouth too large for its face. A long, tar-black tongue.

“Oh, River, this is odd,” the Doctor shivered. Beside him, River stirred.

“Whatssodd?” she slurred. 

“Your drawing. You saw this in the mirror?” 

“Mhmm.” 

He gulped. “Well, I just saw it in a dream.” 

River sat up. That was enough to get her attention.

“What?” 

“The tapping we heard earlier! It was morse code!” He grinned, pleased with himself, but his smile quickly faded. Whatever had sent him his vision was hurting, afraid, and in dire need of help. “I realised it when I dreamt I was in the forest, and the knocking was coming from inside the trees. This creature was out there, too, and it was afraid. It was mourning. River, I think it’s a parent, and I think it’s afraid it’ll lose its children!” 

“That’s bonkers,” River groaned, but she believed him. So much for going back to sleep.

“The others heard the tapping, too,” the Doctor stood up, quickly dressing. Pulling his suspenders over his shoulders, he went on. “I think it’s time we call a meeting of all the other lodgers and find out exactly what’s going on at Bluewood Manor.”


	4. Death in Paradise

Max and Oscar sat in the lounge, sharing a bowl of diced fruit. 

“What do you reckon this is all about?” Oscar asked. “Rounding us up like it’s assembly or something.” 

“I like him,” Max popped a gooseberry into his mouth and shrugged. “I like the Doctor. I believe there’s a 96.9 per cent chance we can trust him.” 

Oscar considered the odds. “What about the other 3.1 per cent?” 

“There’s a 3.1 per cent chance that he’s a complete and utter madman.” 

Ulra and Hex stepped into the lounge, and Ulra waved politely at Max and Oscar. She didn’t have any reason to distrust them, though she tended to distrust everyone. Oscar had stood up for everyone when it counted, and she thought that was a perfectly respectable thing to do. Nevertheless, she still chose the seat as far away from everyone else as she could.

Toward the centre of the room, the Doctor had pulled out a chair and climbed up onto it. River watched him with mingled amusement and pride. 

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all here today,” he began in the most regal tone he could manage. 

“We’re still missing two,” Max interrupted. 

“Yes,” Hex signed as Ulra translated. “The tiny-minds.” 

“Oi, do we have to invite them to the party?” Oscar groaned, earning a stern glare from his husband. 

“Unfortunately, this is a matter that concerns us all,” the Doctor wished it didn’t. He’d really rather not have to deal with those two again today. He was a patient man, but bigotry was the thing that shoved him closest to the edge; if they pushed him the wrong way, he’d be happy to push right back. 

“I’ll go round them up,” River stood. “They’re afraid of me. I think they’ll do what I say.” 

“Brilliant. Ten points to River!” 

“There’s a point system now?” Oscar was suddenly intrigued. 

“I was mostly joking, but--” 

“How many points for sharing a gooseberry?” Oscar held out his fruit bowl. The Doctor took a berry from the bunch, studied it for a moment, and then grinned. 

“Twenty points to Oscar!” 

River made her way down the corridor, wondering why there didn’t seem to be any workers at the estate except for Tom. Surely it required more than one person to manage it all! What if something broke? Was there a maintenance person? Who cooked the food? Who washed the bedsheets? She hadn’t seen a chef or a housekeeper. Or anyone, for that matter. It was odd, but it was far from the strangest thing, and so she decided it was better not to dwell on it. 

She came to the last door at the end of the hall, and she knocked. 

“Hello? There’s something rather urgent the Doctor wants to discuss with everyone.” 

Silence. 

River groaned. Of course they’d be difficult. She imagined that they’d hole themselves up in the room with rations and weaponry to defend against a tide of enlightened thought. People like them were all the same; hopelessly ignorant beyond education, and rich enough to never need to think for themselves. A deadly combination, she thought. Absolutely lethal. Ignorance and wealth were the bleach and ammonia of the thinking universe, and whatever they produced was the ideological equivalent of chloramine gas.

She thought about going back to the lounge empty-handed. No one would be too tragically disappointed. Even the Doctor seemed reluctant to get them involved. But she had a feeling -- the kind that started deep in her gut and worked its way slowly up to her head. Others called it instinct or intuition, but River knew it as something learned, practised and mastered.

She tried the doorknob. It was locked, but that wasn’t a problem. If the most secure prison in the galaxy couldn’t keep her in, a hotel door could hardly keep her out. She pulled the skeleton key from her pocket -- it was all for show, but she loved a good drama. From her hair, she plucked a safety pin she’d charged with a sonic burst (just in case), and jammed it into the lock.

Three.

Two.

One. 

There was the hiss of electrical wires melting, and then her key, pressed against the lock, granted her access. The door creaked open. 

It was dark inside; the blinds were pulled tightly shut. It was easy to tell, though, that their room was significantly larger than the others. But in this case, larger only meant more space for something to hide.

She could she shadowed lumps of clothes scattered over the floor. Odd, she thought, stepping over them. Those two seemed unbearably prim and proper, with clothes far too expensive to wash, let alone toss on the ground. 

“Anybody home?” 

The silence seemed responsive. If it was possible for the room to get quieter when it realised she was there, it would’ve. 

Making her way through the suite felt like crossing a path that might be boobytrapped, but she kept on. A chair with a missing arm was propped up against the washroom door, tucked under the knob. Whatever was in there was clearly meant to be kept in. With a shiver, she remembered the way she’d felt when she’d looked in the mirror and her own eyes didn’t look back. It was horror. It was anger. It was helplessness. And all that and more could’ve very well been bottled up behind the door up ahead. 

But River wasn’t the type to run away. There was a difference between those who got afraid and those who tried very hard to pretend they didn’t, and the difference, River figured, was pride. 

With a deep breath, she removed the chair and tossed it aside, kicking the door open and grasping her skeleton key in her fist like a knife. 

But the creature she’d seen was not what awaited her on the other side of the door. It was, in fact, something much worse. 

“Doctor!” she shouted. “We’ve got a problem!” 

It was a grisly scene that made even River feel a twinge of nausea, with smears of crimson tarnishing the muted gold of the claw-foot bathtub. Blown-out brain matter and cartilage stained the marble countertop, and watery red handprints stood out starkly against the white tile floor. Amid them, written shakily in half-dried blood, was the word _Down._

At the centre of it all, Geoff and Gigi were very, very dead.

***  
Tom had been blubbering to himself for the last ten minutes, and if he didn’t stop soon, River was willing to accept that three people would die at Bluewood Manor rather than the two who’d already passed. 

“I just can’t believe something like this could happen here!” He wailed. “How is it possible!? It looks like a robbery!”

“I don’t know, but it’s happened,” said the Doctor sternly, surveying everyone in the room. “Someone in the room is a killer, and I’m going to find out who did it.” 

Max and Oscar. Hex and Ulra. Tom and River. Everyone’s eyes were cast down to the carpeted floor of Geoff and Gigi’s suite, except, of course, for River’s. She was staring at the corpses with the curiosity of a scientist; as an archaeologist, she’d dug up more bodies than she could count. Some still had bits of rotting skin clinging stubbornly to old bones, and some were skeletons so old they predated the rise of empires, the birth of stars. It was her job to find out how those discarded people in dirt died, but for the Faris’, it was rather obvious. 

Both had been shot squarely in the head, but she noticed the way Gigi’s body was slumped, arms outstretched, hands positioned stiffly among the handprints. It had taken her awhile to die, at least long enough for her to write the beginning of a cryptic code in her own blood.

You’d think as an archaeologist -- or as someone brought up for the sole purpose of killing someone else -- she’d have developed a certain numbness when it came to death. But she’d fallen in love with the man she was meant to kill; perhaps that should’ve been the first indication that no matter how hard Madame Kovarian tried, she couldn’t quite rip out the heart of River Song. Though she was skilled at keeping a neutral face, calm and placid, River felt a pang of sympathy swell in her chest, and she let it out as a slow and steady breath. No one deserved to die like that, not even someone as horrid as Geoff or Gigi Faris.

“Surely we should just call the authorities!” Tom whimpered. The Doctor pulled psychic paper from his pocket and held it out to him.

“I am the authorities.” He pointed his sonic in the air and clicked a button. “I’ve sealed the main doors. Your keys won’t work anymore. No one gets in or out until we figure out what’s going on here.” 

“I bet it was him!” Ulra pointed at Oscar. 

“Me!?” he cried. 

“When they were arguing last night, I heard him say he’d kill them!” 

“That’s absurd!” Max cut in before Oscar could. “People say things when they’re angry! That’s nothing to warrant a charge of murder!” 

“And besides,” Oscar hissed, jabbing a finger into Hex’s chest. “His kind is known for war.” 

Hex signed furiously.

“Oh, as if humans aren’t the most warlike race in the galaxy!” Ulra translated. “You’d kill for anything! Money, power, politics!” 

“That’s enough!” River shouted. “None of us are the judge or the jury, but someone here is an executioner. No one ever solved a problem by pointing fingers like children after a schoolyard fight. Doctor,” she turned to face him. “The woman spent the last minutes of her life writing the word ‘down’ on the floor. What do you think it means?” 

“A clue to who killed her, I’m sure,” the Doctor pulled out his sonic and scanned the body. “Or maybe to why.” 

“What kind of weapon can do that sort of damage?” Ulra glanced over at the pool of blood congealing beneath George’s corpse, and she gagged. “It’s just dreadful!” 

“Solid-state converter gun,” the Doctor shivered. “Nasty stuff, and perfectly silent. It effectively weaponises air particles by converting the oxygen in the air into its solid form, and then fires it at the target at the speed of sound. Requires no energy, gun powder, or batteries, so it doesn’t leave a residual trace on the shooter. You can only use them two or three times before they burn themselves up; the energy swell is just too much." 

"It's the future's version of stabbing someone to death with an icicle," River explained.

Max groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.” 

Oscar wrapped his arm around his husband. “Clearly none of us would own a weapon like that.” 

“Nothing is clear until we have all the facts,” the Doctor reminded him gently. 

“Do you think it’s possible that the creature we’ve all seen did this?” River asked him. The Doctor shook his head. 

“From what I’ve gathered, the creature can’t exist in our realm. That’s why it uses visions and mirrors and dreams to communicate. Besides, if it was going to kill, where would it have gotten a high-tech gun?” 

Convinced, River nodded. Sensible. “But if it can’t exist in our realm, what was the tapping in the wall?” 

The Doctor paused. “I haven’t quite worked that bit out yet.”

“Why are you in charge, anyway?” Ulra demanded of the Doctor. “How do we know you didn’t do it?” 

There was a murmur of agreement among the crowd. 

“I told you,” the Doctor held out his psychic paper again. “I’m the authorities. We both are, me and River. We’ve been investigating reports of strange things here. Knocking on the walls. An apparition that appears in mirrors and dreams. The knocking is asking for help in Morse Code.” 

“That’s ridiculous!” Tom insisted. “Why would anyone here ever need help?” 

The Doctor turned to him with a look he reserved for venture capitalists and CEOs that he didn’t particularly like. “Do you have cameras on the premises?” 

Tom shook his head. “We’ve no need!”

As if something was trying its best to call Tom’s bluff, the power went out. Silence fell -- the kind of still quiet that only settles when the white noise you didn’t know you’d noticed suddenly stopped.

“Well,” said River. “I’d say something begs to differ, Tom.” 

“Oh, it’s alright!” Tom laughed nervously. “I was in the middle of routine maintenance when I got called away by this...tragedy. The system shuts down automatically if maintenance isn’t complete. Prevents overheating, overcooling, over-anything, you know? I’ll go get it all back on.” 

He glanced at the Doctor expectantly, his eyes asking permission. Slowly, the Doctor nodded, and Tom scampered off. 

“River,” the Doctor leaned closer to her. “Do you think he’s hiding something?” 

“I think he’s hiding everything. Want me to follow him?” 

The Doctor nodded. “Yes. But be careful.” He handed her the sonic, and she tucked it into her pocket.

River gave him a cheeky grin. “Never.” 

*** 

Without the warm light flooding the halls, Bluewood Manor looked a bit less like a romantic getaway and a bit more like the kind of place where two idiots would go to get gruesomely murdered. She ran her fingertips along the wall to keep herself balanced and grounded; the further she drifted from the wide windows and open doors, the darker it was getting.

She could’ve used the sonic to light her way, but she’d rather go stealth; the first rule of following someone was to fight away the temptation to light a torch. Except...she’d lost Tom. She wasn’t even sure if she was still following him. Or if he was following her. Odd, she thought, how everything got all front-to-back when the lights went out. 

The floor creaked underfoot, and as River made her way down the narrow corridor, she felt the very same eeriness that she’d felt in the bath. In the shadows lived something she didn’t understand, something that lurked on the wrong side of mirrors and very possibly committed double homicide. River figured the Doctor was probably right -- he usually was -- but that meant something even scarier than a murderous monster that moved in the walls. It meant that an ordinary human being, who had seemed at first perfectly normal and in love, had done something heinous, and that someone’s spouse was bound to feel betrayed. 

What flipped that switch in a person, she wondered? What had to happen, what had to stir, what had to wake up deep in the belly of the beast in hiding? She often feared it would one day wake up in her and tear its way out, tooth and nail, and do what it was born to do, what she’d been raised to do, what she’d forgotten about once upon a time. Did that make sense? It was her own life and it hardly made any sense to her. She shook her head as if to rid it of the silly, intrusive thoughts that whispered such horrid things to her. 

Down, she thought. The message on the floor in blood. What could that mean? She didn’t know much about any of the other lodgers, but nothing stood out as an immediately obvious connection. If she was dying and she knew she only had a short time to write a clue, she’d certainly pick something less cryptic. A defining feature. A name, for Heaven’s sake! But Gigi had chosen to write _down_. It must’ve been an important word; the most important word of Gigi’s life. But she wondered why.

She’d managed to stray rather far from the beaten path, delving deeper into the long hallways of Bluewood Manor. The only thing she’d passed had been locked doors and windows that led to nowhere. She’d written those mysteries off as a simple construction dilemma; maybe the house had been smaller once, and in adding onto it, they had to board up old windows and lock up old doors. But she was beginning to doubt herself. She was beginning to doubt everything. The dark tended to have that effect on her. 

River paused, and her breath caught in her lungs. The wall she’d been holding onto had changed. Instead of the cool touch of wood, she felt the smooth surface of a mirror. And if history was any indication, a mirror wasn’t all she’d find. 

She lit the sonic on its lowest torch setting; it was barely enough to cast an aura of green light around her, but it proved her theory. On the wall, there was a large mirror stuck in place. No ornate frame, no decorative border. Just a thin sheet of glass affixed to a wooden wall. It could’ve been for a last-minute outfit check or group selfies, given the resort’s typical clientele, but its inconspicuousness made it feel out of place.

With her hand up against the glass, she studied her expression and wondered how it would read to a stranger. She didn’t feel exceptionally afraid. At least, not of anything she might find in the hall. She felt curious, and mildly unsure, but afraid was not what she’d call it. 

Her reflection changed abruptly, as she’d hoped it would, and so did the surface of the mirror. Instead of glass, her fingers prodded into a strange film, and instead of curls and hazel eyes, she was looking at empty sockets and wiry hair, as black as oil and slick as grease.

“It’s you again,” she studied the creature. “My husband received your message.” 

Its head rolled from side to side, and River felt like it was studying her. Not maliciously, but curiously. She wondered if maybe to it, she was the one that looked like a hideous beast.

“The same night you sent a message for help, two people died,” she told it. It seemed to frown, if that was possible. “Do you know who killed them?” 

Footsteps were fast approaching, and River’s pulse quickened. She turned to see who might’ve been coming her way, and as she did, a skeletal hand burst through the mirror’s strange film and took her arm in its steely grasp.

She gasped, startled. Where the creature’s strange hand touched her skin, it felt like she was being burned by the coldest fire, or frozen by the hottest snow. It was a hard feeling to put into words, but it hurt. A lot. Her lips parted with a cry that would never quite make it out; with impossible strength, the hand yanked her through the film, and as the mirror reset itself with barely a ripple, River vanished.


	5. Ms. Scarlett in the Kitchen With the Knife

“It’s like a game of Clue,” said the Doctor, pacing the floor. “Ms. Scarlett in the kitchen with the knife. Or rather, one of you lot in the bathroom with a gun.” 

Ulra had sat down at the desk in the bedroom, per the Doctor’s request. The other three waited outside on the balcony, sharing Oscar’s last trio of cigarettes. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong, Doctor,” Ulra folded her hands and looked up at him innocently. “And Hex wouldn’t either!” 

“I’ll talk to Hex in a moment,” he sat down across from her. “But now it’s your turn. I want very much to believe that none of you are capable of killing someone, even someone you hated very much.” 

Ulra’s eyes glossed over. “That’s the thing, Doctor! I didn’t hate them!” 

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow. “They were very rude to you.” 

“I felt sad for them. Sad that they had opened themselves up so rarely to the things that make the universe the most beautiful,” Ulra sniffled. “They were just sad old people, and they didn’t deserve to die for that!” 

The Doctor reached across and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I agree with you,” he told her. “And that’s why we have to figure out what happened in there.”

“This creature we’ve all seen,” Ulra reached for her sketchbook and flipped it open. “We can’t rule it out, Doctor.” 

The Doctor took her drawing and looked at it; it was remarkably similar to River’s. The sores were even in the same exact place on its face.

“When did you see this creature, Ulra?” 

“In the mirror in the washroom,” she chuckled miserably. “I thought I was going mad. Ever since the accident, I sometimes see things that aren’t really there.”

“The accident?” The Doctor softened. “What can you tell me about the accident?” 

***

If this was death, it was only mildly worse than River had hoped it would be, and infinitely better than she thought it would be.

She felt herself land, which was only odd because she hadn’t ever had the sensation of falling. She slipped on something sticky and wet, tumbling down, and her hands, outstretched to break her fall, sunk instead into a blue-lit goo coating the ground. It smelled earthy and organic, like dirt after rain coupled with the twangy sharpness of still water. River supposed it could’ve been worse. 

She groaned as she pulled her hand from a particularly sticky pile, wiping it miserably on her shirt. To her surprise, though, the viscous matter had coated the burn on her arm and healed it right up. It was as if it had never been there at all. She quite suddenly remembered Tom’s scars, and with a bolt of anxiety, a nefarious puzzle began to piece itself together. 

“Alright,” she sat up, glancing around. “This is certainly new. Yanked through a mirror by an off-brand version of the Grudge. Great date, Doctor!”

At first glance, she would’ve believed that she was in the forest, but something was wrong. Everything was lit in the same blue hue, emanating from the dim tree bulbs hanging overhead. But the trees were not made of wood; she reached out to touch one, and it was made of the same thin film on the mirror. Solid, but if she pushed hard enough, she’d be able to crack it right open. Curiously, she pulled herself to her feet. This realm seemed to go on for as far back as the eye could see, until fog swallowed it up. But the sky was synthetic, and it seemed to be sinking, pushing down on the trees and bending up their branches, bowed like a drop ceiling with a leak. 

If she looked at where she’d come from, she could see into the hall of the manor! It was faint and a little furry around the edges, but it was there. She was sure of it. 

A cool wind blew, and suddenly, the creature was standing next to her. It groaned, a low and rancid sound, and River gave it her best pout.

“You can’t just go dragging people away!” She barked. “It’s rude! I have things to do, you know!” 

She noticed a burn on the creature’s hand; her skin had hurt it just as much as it had injured her’s. For a moment, she felt guilty for shouting.

It reached down into the goo, and when it extracted its limb, it had healed, too. 

“Why did you risk injury to yourself to yank me in here?” 

The creature pointed toward the portal into the corridor, and then to its own dangling eye. 

“You want me to look, hm? Is that it?” River made her way over to the opening. It was just about at her eye level, and as she looked out of it, she watched Tom as frantically reached toward the ceiling. He pulled a little box from the wall, and from it, he extracted a camera. He pressed a series of buttons on it, wiping its memory.

“He said there weren’t any cameras on the grounds,” River turned to the creature. “What reason would he have to lie? You’d think he’d want to know who killed them.” 

If the creature could’ve looked exasperated, it would’ve.

“Unless…oi, I’m slow!” She thumped herself on the head. “Tom killed them!?” 

It nodded. 

“But why!?” 

The creature beckoned for her to follow it. 

“I have a lot of questions, you know,” she jogged to keep up. “Where are we? And what are you? Why did you send for help? I have to tell the Doctor about Tom, so I need to know how to get back!” 

It paused, turning to face her. It reached out to touch her face, but she pulled away.

“Last time you grabbed me, it left a nasty burn on both of us. But your floor goo fixed it. How’d it do that?” 

It nodded, as if to say everything would be explained in due course. After a moment’s hesitation, River leaned into its touch and let its long fingers wrap around her head.

And she was remembering.

A little girl, cowered in a corner, her knees hugged to her chest. Her frame shook with the harshness of her sobs, and in the light of a lone desk lamp, tears stood out against her cheeks.

“No more,” she sniffled, looking up at a woman sitting nonchalantly in a chair across the room. “Madame Kovarian, no more bad dreams.” 

“Your fear is your weakness, little one,” she told her coldly. She was holding a strange little box with a series of buttons on it. Press any of them, and it transmitted the kind of waves that could give little girls nightmares. “As long as you let the world know you’re afraid, they’ll use that against you. They’ll hurt you. But I won’t,” she smiled a wicked grin and pressed a button. The little girl screamed.

River opened her eyes and found it suddenly quite hard to remember how to breathe. The creature was looking at her with sympathy, its hands still gently pressed against her temple. She was surprised to find that its touch didn’t hurt. Maybe this realm was different.

“I remember,” she let out a shaky breath. “Why is it so important that I remember that?” 

_Child of fear_ , said the creature, but its mouth didn’t move. Its touch must’ve opened a telepathic link. River could feel it prodding around in her head. _You were once a child of fear, trapped in a room, weaponised and exploited._

“Yeah,” River swallowed. “Thanks for the reminder.” 

_So too are the children of my people._

Interesting. River looked around, and sure enough, there were dozens of creatures, flickering in and out of reality. Some laid on the ground, motionless and ill, while others reached desperately toward the synthetic sky, low gurgles lost in their throats. 

“Who are you?” she asked it urgently. “I want to help you, but I don’t understand!” 

_We are the souls of the trees._

“Tree spirits?” River had never heard of such a thing. She barely believed that people had souls, only consciousness, but trees? She learned something new everyday. It would explain, though, how they could move so freely through the wooden walls. Wood was sort of their thing. 

_The man in the mansion drains our power to line his pockets in material wealth, the tree spirit sounded pained. We live in misery so that his business may prosper. Our children suffer in fear, long awaiting the day they may once again be free._

Solemnly, River nodded. Of course. Every business, she figured, was secretly some sort of evil enterprise in one way or another. The trees glowed because of complex chemical reactions within their bulbs and seeds. If she was to think like a slummy businessman, it made sense that those chemical reactions could be converted into energy, and that the energy could power the estate for free. Fully automated. No need to pay a chef or housekeeper or even a bill, because it was all done at the expense of the natural world.

“You’ve been trying to get people’s attention for awhile, haven’t you?” River muttered sadly. “And people always just ran away.” 

_Fear is a natural response to communication between realms. And yet, you were unafraid._

The spirit’s eyes began to float in a strange and uncanny way, surveying River with intrigue. One stalk carried an eyeball to the left, and the other to the right, where it took note of her strangeness, her otherworldliness. In this realm, she was the monster in the mirror.

It was a gesture that might’ve terrified someone else -- a gesture that so pointedly contradicted the laws of nature and defied every expectation she’d come to have about reality. But for River, who had, as a child, been so desperately afraid she could hardly breathe, everything else felt like little ripples compared to what had once been a tsunami. She fancied herself immune to fear as the rest of the world knew it; her nerves were already just frayed enough, just raw enough, just exposed enough, that she was quite certain nothing could ever compare to the things she’d felt before. And so far, she’d been right. 

But it was more than just that. Yes, the little girl in Kovarian's Nightmare Room had been so frightened, but if that fear was an earthquake, she'd been feeling the aftershocks ever since. She was always just a little afraid; fear was like static or white noise in the background of her feelings, like a fan humming low in the background. And so when something that really, really ought to frighten her came along, she was constantly one step ahead of it, because she was afraid already. She was afraid all the time.

She felt the creature’s sympathies through the telepathic link, and she realised it had heard everything she'd thought as if she'd screamed it aloud. Instantly, she regretted sharing anything at all. 

“I’ll help you,” she promised, eager to change the topic. “Any way that I can.”

_Thank you,_ said the spirit. _What do you seek in return?_

River paused. “I don’t need anything in return,” she told it. “I just want to help you because someone terrible is benefitting from your pain, and that isn’t how the universe should work.” There it was again -- an example of the universe’s cold neutrality. Yes, karma was just anonymous revenge, but this time, it would not be unattributed. Today, karma had a name, and it was River Song.

The tree spirit’s eyes assumed their position facing down at the ground. River wondered briefly how it could see. 

_You are noble,_ it said. River laughed.

“Oh, trust me, I’m hardly that.” 

_A warrior, then?_

River faltered. “Sort of.” 

I will show you the way, the spirit began to descend into the ground. With only a moment’s notice, River realised she was sinking, too.

_First, we must go down._


	6. The Artist

Down.

It was last word Gigi Faris had ever written, and River thought she might be starting to understand why. 

The realm of the tree spirits didn’t have the same concept of direction as the world of the living, but down was down no matter where you were. It was what came out on the other side that struck her as odd.

They’d sunk through the floor, and reappeared standing right-side up on another. It had felt a bit like getting the breath knocked out of your lungs or getting squeezed very hard by a robotic arm -- River had experienced both relatively recently -- but stranger yet was the view of a room in Bluewood Manor. It was sort of a basement or boiler room, but instead of typical sublevel things, there were rows of stasis chambers each containing one of the spirits. Many were smaller. River realised with horror that they must’ve been the children. 

Their mouths were twisted into perpetual shouts of agony, their hands extended toward freedom but frozen halfway there. 

“My god,” River whispered. “I can’t believe it. What is this place?” 

Through the window into the real world, she watched Tom rush into the room. He was shouting unintelligibly, pounding on the chambers and kicking at clutter on the floor.

“We need power!” He cried. “You stupid animals, we need power!” 

He rushed over to a control panel, heavy with switches and levers and buttons, and he pressed all of them at once. 

The sound that came from the stasis chambers brought River to her knees; the collective cry of a dozen wounded creatures, a scream so high-pitched she could feel it in her teeth. She tried to cover her ears, but she could still hear it. It was in her head. It was coming in like an untunable radio signal through the telepathic link.

_The cries of our wounded children,_ said that tree spirit, mournful. 

“I’m going to step through that wall and rip Tom’s horrid head right off his shoulders. This ends now!” River stood up, but the spirit reached out an arm and held her back. 

_You mustn’t, or you, too, shall become like the elders._

“Those two tried to help!?”

_They wandered down by mistake, and upon seeing what you see now, they attempted to take one of the chambers, sure it would bring them wealth in auction._

“Ah,” River suddenly felt a little less sorry for the dead old couple. “Of course they did.” 

_But the keeper of the estate is a mad and dangerous man. He will kill you, and take all that you love._

Reluctantly, River nodded. “What do we do, then?” 

_The artist knows things. Forgotten things._

“The artist?” River wondered if the spirit might’ve been referring to her. She’d drawn the picture, after all, and she’d drawn it well. But she didn’t know much of anything. In fact, the more she learned, the less she was sure she knew. 

_Her memories are hidden from sight, but they can be recovered, if she wills it so._

“Who is the artist?”

There was a creak from behind them, from deep within the realm, and at least a tenth of the trees went out. The creature doubled over, pained, and River caught it. 

“It’ll be alright,” she promised, giving its matted hair a comforting pat. “I’ll find the artist. Find the artist and warn the Doctor about all this. That’s step one. Step two: I’ll find out what the artist knows. Step three: I’ll free your children and turn Tom into fertilizer. That’s the plan.” 

As a few more trees went dark, River knew she was going to have to act fast. 

*** 

“I don’t remember anything about it,” Ulra said, her eyes fluttering down to stare at her folded hands. She sat up a little straighter. “Or anything before it. I only remember my own name because of the records on Resus One.” 

The Doctor listened intently, his eyes gentle. He was supposed to be interrogating a murder suspect, but this was far more interesting, and he had the bad habit of getting off-track. 

There was a clatter in the bathroom, which, to his knowledge, was only meant to be occupied by a pair of corpses. Ulra let out a frightened groan. 

“It’s ghosts, Doctor! I’m sure of it! They’ve come back from the dead!” 

“That’s one place nothing can ever come back from, Ulra,” he assured her, standing up with caution. When River darted out of the bathroom, her hair a bit ruffled and her clothes a bit wrinkled, he let out a sigh of relief followed immediately by a confused huff.

“River? How...you went that way, and--” 

“I came out of a mirror. It’s a long story and we’ve only got a short while, but you can stop the interrogations because none of them did it.” 

Ulra faltered, relieved. “Oh, I knew none of us could!” 

“Then who--” 

And in unison, River and the Doctor said, “Tom!” 

“Why didn’t I think of that!?” 

“Because,” said River. “He seems like a bumbling idiot who isn’t capable of tying his own shoes, but it’s a ruse, Doctor. He’s a mastermind and he’s destroying this forest and the creatures that live in it.” 

Drawn in by the commotion, the trio outside had made their way back to the room. 

“Nothing lives in the forest,” said Max. “It can’t sustain life.” 

“Those creatures. They live in the trees," River told them. "They’re from a slightly different reality than ours, and they can’t last for very long in our world. But they’re made of a sort of energy, and Tom has figured out how to harvest that energy to power the estate. But he’s killing them to do it, keeping them locked up in stasis pods in the basement. I heard them screaming, Doctor.” She turned to him with wet eyes. “I promised I’d help.” 

The Doctor cupped her cheek and smiled gently. “Of course you did. And of course we will.” 

“But why?” Hex signed, and Ulra translated. “What reason would Tom have to kill? It is not noble to kill without reason.” 

“They were trying to take one of the stasis pods. They wanted to sell it,” River glanced back toward the bathroom. “Tom killed them to protect his secret.”

“Who sees a creature in pain and immediately thinks it would make a nice conversation piece at the market?” Oscar shook his head. “Sick bastards.” 

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, love,” Max took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Even if they are sick bastards."

“So what do we do?” Ulra clutched her sketchbook to her chest. “How can we help them?” 

River noticed the sketchbook, and she was sure a pair of circuits in her brain shorted out. She meant to say something intelligent, something well thought out and well-explained in the tone of a diligent and calm scholar, but instead, she pointed at Ulra and shouted, “The artist!” 

Ulra, confused, let out a nervous laugh.

“I just doodle to calm my nerves.” 

“No, no, it’s something the tree spirit told me--” 

“That thing can talk!?” Oscar huffed. “This whole mess could’ve been avoided if just spoke up.” 

“It’s a telepathic link, and I don’t think it can build one with someone who hasn’t been to their realm, but--” 

“You’ve been to their realm!?” Max’s eyes widened. “What was it like there? I’d love to study it! I’m sure--” 

“Oi, let her speak!” the Doctor cut in. “Or else she’ll turn the sonic into an airhorn again.” 

“Listen,” River went on. “It told me that the artist knows something forgotten. I don’t know what that means, but I know it's important. It’s the key to saving them. And Ulra, I think you’re the artist.” 

Hex stepped up protectively. “This is not satisfactory,” he signed. 

“I know it must be scary,” the Doctor raised his hands in hope of de-escalating the budding conflict. “But Ulra, you said you don’t remember the accident. You have a whole life of knowledge in your head that you can’t access. Maybe you knew something -- maybe you learned something, or heard something, or saw something.” 

“It’s possible that the creature can help you remember,” River said. “She showed me a memory from my childhood.” 

“And me, ghosts from my past,” the Doctor agreed. 

Tearfully, Ulra shook her head. “I don’t want any part of this.” 

“Listen, Ulra,” Max put a hand on her shoulder. “You might be able to help the tree spirits escape, and bring a very bad man to justice in the process.” 

“And,” Oscar added, but then paused. “Nah, that’s basically it. I just wanted to be included.” 

“No!” Ulra cried. “I can’t. I just can’t! What if I was someone horrid before? What if I did terrible things? Or what if I was just perfectly ordinary and saw something so evil my mind decided to toss it out, for my own good? Or...or what if I had parents? Siblings? Children? What if I had someone out there in the universe that’s been missing me all this time? What if there’s someone out there that I ought to be missing? I don’t want to feel all that guilt, all that shame, all that fear! I don’t want to remember!” She collapsed to the ground, sobbing into her arms. Hex sat by her, eyeing the group with an expression River had only seen in the guard dogs at Stormcage and, on occasion, in the Doctor. 

But now, he was tender. The Doctor knelt by her, offering her his hands. Sniffling, she took hold of them. 

“Ulra, can I tell you story?” 

She nodded. 

“Alright. This is a story about a man -- a perfectly ordinary man -- who tried very hard to forget what it felt like to have a heart. But he learned the hard way that it’s better to remember the things that hurt than it is to wish them away.” 

A hush had fallen over the room. All eyes were drawn to the Doctor.

“Once upon a time, a very long while ago, there was a man who had four little children. But there was a war on -- a war that would grow to be very, very big, but at the time, it was just a series of small altercations, usually far away. Spaceships firing at each other over the desert, and that sort of thing. Life went on like normal, and it was very, very easy to pretend that there wasn’t a war on at all.” 

River sat down on the floor beside them. Her eyes never left the Doctor’s face. This was a story from capital-b Before. Before he was the Doctor. Before he started running. There were no records of stories like this, and as far as she knew, he took great care to make sure there never would be.

“But then, one day, when the man was away, a battle broke out over his town. One ship shot down another -- no one ever knew which side fired first, because the ship that fell from the sky had been carrying nuclear bombs. When it crashed, the explosion leveled whole city blocks. Schools were turned to ash. Homes, to dust. Hospitals, to dirt. Thousands died so quickly there were no bodies to bury; their gravestones were nuclear shadows preserved forever in brick walls and on cobblestone streets.” 

The Doctor paused to take a breath. It was the longest second in the world. 

“The man returned home when he’d heard what had happened. He learned, then, that he had only one little child; the others had gone," he swallowed hard. "Their school had been ground zero. One minute, studying maths, and the next…gone.” he nodded, lips pursed and eyes wet. A joyless, pain-stricken smile curled his lips. “The fourth little child had been out sick. Now, imagine the man’s grief. Imagine the worst pain in all the universe, and then forget it, because it doesn’t even come close. He hadn’t been there, and he knew he should’ve been. He hadn’t been there to kiss his children goodbye before the left for school. He hadn’t been there to read them a bedtime story the night before. He had been out, playing games with life as if it wouldn’t go on or end without him.” 

River wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but she found that she couldn’t move. A pin dropping to the floor would’ve been louder than a sonic boom. To breathe felt too invasive. To move felt unthinkable. 

“Not a day went by that the man didn’t wish he could forget. Snap his fingers, and have it all gone from his mind forever. No more memory of singing songs, or reading stories, or playing chess. Just a blank slate. No pain. No guilt. No grief. Not a day went by that the man didn’t wish he could forget their faces, because they looked at him from the wrong side of his eyelids and asked him where he was. If it was worth it. Why he wasn’t there to save them, and every time he slept, he had to answer them. Night after night, he had to apologise to ghosts. 

“And every time something new came by to hurt him, the man thought it couldn’t get any worse. But soon, he’d lost his homeland, his family, his friends, his world. Over and over again, everywhere he went, he lost. Or he knows he will lose," in his periphery, he looked at River, and he felt her watching him, too. "And so he ran, trying very hard to forget what he was running from. But then one day it occurred to him that he was running from himself. And so he stood still, and he caught up with himself, and he hurt. Do you know what you do with a pain like that, Ulra?” 

Ulra’s tears had stopped. She was far too engrossed in the Doctor’s horrid tale, wondering if it was true or just a fable.

“What?” 

“You keep it right here,” he put his hand over his hearts. “You remember it. You hold it close and you nurture it, because yes, remembering is agony. But it’s also beauty. It’s life. It’s a sea of personal histories the man had learned to carry with him, to defend, to honour, to do right by. If the man had forgotten his three little children, he never would’ve remembered how much of a privilege it is to love something so desperately that it hurts so much to lose it. If he had forgotten all the times he’d been cruel out of grief or spite or just plain cruelty, he never would’ve remembered how important it is to be kind.” 

Max and Oscar were holding onto each other, tears in their eyes. Even Hex had softened; his arms had found their way around Ulra, who looked as though she’d had an epiphany. River had looked away. 

She couldn’t stand to watch the Doctor bare his soul; she wanted to know about his past, but she couldn’t stand to see him hurt like he was hurting, to think about how alone he must’ve felt, how afraid, how sad. She knew what he’d done to Gallifrey, but she also knew how strange and morphic grief could be; sometimes, it hurt less to lose a million people than to lose just one. Or, in this case, just three. Yes, she knew it was more than a story he'd made up to teach a lesson. The Doctor was a pro at make-believe, but his made-up stories always had a happy ending. His true ones rarely ever did.

“What do you say, Ulra?” the Doctor smiled through his tears. After a pause, she smiled, too. 

“I’ll remember.”


	7. Remember

“It won’t hurt one bit,” River promised, positioning Ulra right in front of the large mirror she’d discovered in the corridors of Bluewood Manor. Knowing what she knew, she imagined it was how Tom captured the spirits. 

“I just have to step through it?” She poked it, and sure enough, it jiggled. The spirit’s face appeared, and Ulra screamed.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor told her. “Just because something looks different from us, that doesn’t mean it’s going to hurt you.” 

“I know, I married a bloody Sontaran!” Ulra sucked in a breath to calm herself. “This is just a lot for me handle right now!” 

“I’m sure it is, but it’ll be okay.” 

“Won’t you come with me?” Ulra turned to River, eyes pleading. “You’ve already been there. You already know the way.” 

River glanced between the Doctor and the mirror, and she shrugged. 

“If you’d like.” 

“Be careful,” the Doctor warned them. “We don’t know if the rules of their realm are the same as ours.” 

“It’s not my first rodeo, sweetie,” River smiled and gave him a quick kiss. “Mind Tom while we’re out; he’s dangerous.” 

The Doctor nodded solemnly, and River returned her attention to Ulra. “Are you ready?” 

“No,” she inhaled sharply. “But I suppose we ought to go anyway.” She turned to Hex and signed something to him. River knew SISL, but to watch felt like an intrusion, and so she took it upon herself to stare instead at the floor, eyes tracing the spiral patterns on the carpet. 

When Ulra cleared her throat, River knew it was time to go. Positioned before the mirror, River reached out to touch the glass, and sure enough, her hand sunk into the marshy film. It tingled a bit, like static electricity. She hadn’t had the time to notice it the first time around, and she figured it was best they didn’t dwell on it this time, either. And so she held her breath and jumped. 

No sooner had they vanished into the mirror did Tom round the corner. Max leaned in closer to Oscar, and Hex assumed a position ready for battle. The Doctor, intent on keeping up appearances, smiled pleasantly. 

“Hello, mate, how’s the system? Or whatever it was that you were checking?” 

Tom laughed a bit too loud for a bit too long. 

“All is perfectly well and good, thank you. What...erm...what are you doing down here? This area is restricted to personnel only.” 

“Well, the bodies upstairs are starting to bloat, and we all needed to get away,” the Doctor managed a cool shrug. “I’ve conducted my interviews, and I believe I have a suspect in mind.” 

“Oh, delightful!” 

“It’s me,” Max stepped forward. Everyone’s eyes widened just a bit, but the Doctor perked up. He loved it when others had clever plans, and it was so very rare that he didn’t have to come up with them himself.

“What!?” Oscar grabbed his arm. “Max, we know--” 

“I did it, because the gentleman spat at you, and his wife said horrid things. I killed them.” 

He gave Oscar a look that said, _We’ve got to make sure Tom doesn’t know we’re onto him. We need to buy River and Ulra enough time to do what they’ve got to do._

Oscar and Hex were slowly starting to understand. The Doctor, caught up in the role, snatched Max and yanked him over toward him. From his pocket, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and quickly fastened Max in. 

“Why do you have handcuffs in your pocket?” Max whispered. 

“It’s a holiday resort for couples. There are some questions you should avoid.” 

Max groaned. “That’s just peachy.” 

“You see,” said the Doctor to the crowd. “I’ve called for backup, and they’re on their way to transport us off-planet, clean up the murder scene, and all that. They might be a while, because of some sort of asteroid shower, so they say, so we’ll just go wait up in the lobby.” 

Tom’s eye twitched. “I suppose that’s alright,” he counted them, and then paused. “Wait. Where are the women?” 

Everyone eyed each other, in search of a plausible lie.

“Ulra is asleep,” said Oscar. “The whole thing tired her out, poor pet.” 

“And River, she’s taking a bath. Wants to wash the drama of death off, she says,” the Doctor smiled fondly. “My brilliant partner-in-not-crime, it was her who cracked the code and learned the truth about our cold-blooded, cold-hearted killer.” He jostled Max, who did his best not to laugh. 

“Very well,” said Tom. “I urge you to get back up to the lobby. It isn’t safe for lodgers to be down here.” 

“Right away!” the Doctor gestured for Hex and Oscar to go ahead of them, and he and Max followed them back up toward the lobby. They felt Tom’s eyes on them, and the Doctor hoped desperately that they’d been convincing enough.

_Hurry up, River,_ he thought. _I don’t know how long we can keep this up._

***

River fell into the same wet earth, and Ulra tumbled down beside her with a muted splash.

“What is this?” Ulra made a face, lifting up her goo-coated hand. “It’s disgusting.” 

“It has healing properties,” River told her. “Think of Neosporin, but ten times more effective.” 

She stood up and offered Ulra her hand, pulling her to her feet. The forest was darker than before; more trees had gone out, casting the realm in strange shadows. A cold breeze blew by them, and the creature appeared. River felt Ulra tense beside her.

“Hello again,” River smiled. “I’ve found the artist, like I told you I would.” 

Ulra shifted closer to her, small and meek. “You’re sure this is alright?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” River promised. The tree spirit moved slowly toward them. It seemed feeble and tired, as if a single step took more energy than it could muster up. River took hold of Ulra’s hand and pulled her toward it, figuring it would be more merciful to meet it halfway. 

“You showed me a memory from my past,” River said. “I was hoping you could help Ulra here remember whatever it is that she’d forgotten. I know you’re feeling weak, and I know you hurt, but can you do that?”

The spirit nodded. It reached its hands out, and Ulra ducked away.

“What is it doing!?” 

“You have to let it touch your head,” River explained. “It’ll establish a telepathic link, and it’ll be able to see into your mind and show you the relevant information.”

Ulra whimpered. “Will it hurt?” 

“Not a bit.” 

Ulra slowly leaned in to its touch, and its fingers fell into position against her temple. 

_Remember,_ it whispered.

And she did.


	8. The Fawn

“I eagerly await the safe return of my wife,” Hex signed to the Doctor. “If she is harmed, I shall hold your woman directly responsible.” 

“River isn’t _my_ woman,” the Doctor rolled his eyes. “You Sontarans, always so possessive. But I assure you, River will keep Ulra safe. There’s no one in the universe braver, smarter, or more capable than River Song.” 

He’d counted himself in that tally, too.

“Max,” Oscar leaned in, placing his hand over his husband’s. “Why are you doing this? You’re putting yourself in danger.” 

“I know,” Max smiled. “It’s sort of exhilarating! Listen, Oscar, you’re always telling me that I have to take more risks.” 

“What! No!” Oscar stammered. “No, no, Max, I mean things like eating a food that isn’t beige, or not packing a change of clothes when we go to the market ‘because you never know what might happen!’ I don’t mean taking credit for a double murder you didn’t commit while the actual killer roams around the house!” 

“As the old adage goes, go big or go home,” Max leaned in close to Oscar, pressing their foreheads together. “I ran the calculations in my head. There’s a 99.6 per cent chance that my plan will work.” 

“And the .4 per cent?” Oscar’s voice cracked like aged plaster. 

“Never mind the .4 per cent,” Max dismissed. 

“No, I am minding it!” Oscar whispered sharply. “I’m minding it because no matter how small the percentage, I’m never willing to wager if the odds are you getting hurt. I don’t care if you’re 99.99999 per cent sure you’ll be fine. That .00001 is too high a number for me when it comes to you.”

Max’s smile faltered, and his eyes grew damp. 

“I love you, Oscar. And I promise you, I’ll be fine.” 

After a moment, Oscar nodded. The whites of his eyes had gone pink, and his Adam’s apple bobbed with every swallow. But the fullness in his throat wouldn’t go away. He hadn’t cried since their wedding five years ago, and he was determined that he wouldn’t start now. 

“You better keep that promise, Maximillan Rivera,” he choked. “Because if you die here, part of me will, too. You’re my better half.” 

Max shook his head. If he hadn’t still be handcuffed -- they had to keep up appearances, of course, with Tom on the prowl -- he would’ve reached out to Oscar and cupped his cheek, ruffling the soft scratchiness of his budding beard. 

“I don’t want to be your better half,” he smiled through tears. “I want to be the person who reminds you that you’re already whole, just as you are. With or without me.” 

The Doctor was trying very hard not to listen in, but he was never all that great with abiding by social boundaries. He thought about how strange and silly and lovely it was that when people were faced with the thought of dying -- though he wouldn’t let anyone else die at Bluewood Manor -- their reaction was to hold onto each other in one way or another. 

It was a universal constant, he thought, that anyone on a doomed spacecraft, broken apart, falling from orbit and glowing red-hot, would reach out to hold each other’s hands as they nose-dived through the stratosphere. Would it soften their impact when they crashed into a desert or sunk into an ocean? Of course it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t keep them from being sucked into the cold vacuum of space when the shields failed and the metal keeping them safe melted away. It wouldn’t keep them whole as the ship shattered, bit by bit, but in those final, terrible moments, they all knew that they were not alone. 

And really, that’s what it was all about. He made a mental note to give River a good, long hug when she got back from wherever it was that she’d gone. 

***   
It was a bit like running, or drowning, or choking, or dying, or being born all over again. But mostly, it was like someone had plugged a USB drive into Ulra’s head and downloaded a bunch of files all at once. 

She didn’t remember laying down on the ground, but when she opened her eyes, she was looking up at a strange false ceiling with River standing over her, eyes wide. The spirit was nowhere in sight.

“Are you alright?” 

Ulra took a breath. Was she? She wasn’t quite sure. She felt more than alright. She felt great. Enlightened. Like a weight had been taken from her shoulders. She remembered a garden with wild plants whose leaves wrapped around each other in a perpetual embrace. She remembered rainfall on her homeworld, the love of her (late) parents. She’d been an only child. She’d been a happy child. She remembered with awe all the places she’d been -- she was a traveler, a sailor among the stars, with her own silver ship and a map and a spirit so free she thought she just might fly away then and there. 

“I’ve been here before,” she sat up. “The forest. I’ve been here! Oh, I said to Hex that it felt like an old friend, and that’s because it is!” She clambered to her feet, nearly slipping. She reached out to River for support.

“Slow down,” River breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been worried the memory return would shatter the fragile Ulra, but it seemed to have instead restored something aged and withered, to breathe new life into her lungs. “You don’t want to force anything or move too quickly.” 

“I know, I know,” Ulra assured. “I’m remembering! I came here as a traveler a long, long time ago. The estate was new, I think. And I was...I was walking through the woods, and I came upon something terrible!” Her expression suddenly shifted, and she brought her hands up to cover her mouth. “Oh, it was terrible!” 

“What was it?” River took hold of her arms and gave her a gentle shake. 

“A hole in the ground. Like...what are they called in cities? The little industrial grates that lead wires from one place to another?” she shook her head. “There was one of those in the forest. I tripped over the latch, and it came open. Inside were these power lines, glowing blue, and every time they surged, the lights in the trees dimmed. If I listened very hard, I could hear screaming coming from the wires. From inside them!” 

“That must be the power line connecting the forest to the estate,” River said, shaking her head in disdain. “It’s probably what powers the stasis chambers.” 

“There’s more,” Ulra’s eyes dampened, and she was staring off at something far away, something that River couldn’t see if she tried. “A man came up behind me. Tom!” she cried. “He was there! He asked me if I was snooping around, and then he pulled out a gun. He shot me! And then he put something on my head. It...it was a-a memory wipe!” Tears welled up in Ulra’s eyes, and she reached instinctively for River’s hand. “That’s the accident I could never remember! It was here. It happened here. It was Tom!” 

Shaken, River gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Ulra,” she said, because she didn’t know what other words could possibly be of use. She was never good with the comforting stuff. She usually left that to the Doctor. “Are you alright?” 

Sniffling, she nodded. “If he had never done that to me, I never would’ve met Hex. Funny, isn’t it?” she turned to River, smiling sadly. “Sometimes the darkest days of our lives open doors to some of the brightest things.” 

“That’s a very nice way of looking at life, Ulra,” River smiled. She’d never thought of it that way. “You’re very strong.” 

“Thank you.” Proudly, Ulra squared her shoulders. 

“Can you show the others where the hole is in the forest? If you can cut the power lines there, Tom will have no way of imprisoning the spirits.”

“I’m sure that I can lead the way!” 

“Fantastic!” River clapped her hands together. “Alright. We’ll have to be tactful. We’ll have to time it just right. The spirits in stasis...I’ll have to bring them back over to their realm first, or else they’ll all die when the power is cut. They’ll burn right up.” 

Ulra grimaced. “How will we know?” 

River pulled out her mobile and gave it a charge with the sonic she’d “forgotten” to return to the Doctor. She handed her the phone. 

“Walkie-talkies,” she muttered into the sonic, and her voice, on slight delay, came through the phone’s speakers.

“Brilliant!” Ulra cheered. “Come along! We’ve no time to waste!” 

As the pair ran toward the exit, River noticed a crumpled mass huddled down at the base of a tree. With a pang, she recognised it as the tree spirit. Her tree spirit. Something in her chest tightened, and she paused to kneel at its side, pushing a strand of damp hair from its face. 

“Just hold on a bit longer. Please, you’ve got to,” she soothed it. “Very, very soon, this will all be better.” 

It let out a strained sound, wearily reaching out its hand up toward her face. She took it’s wrist and placed its fingers against her temple. 

In her mind flashed a memory; a little girl, so very frightened, so very brave, alone in the woods with a gun too big for her to properly hold. Her hands were meant to be playing with toys or coloring in pictures, not for hoisting weaponry made to kill deer.

This was a test, she’d been told. She was not hunting; she was training, perfecting her shot for the day she was born to face. Usually, Madame Kovarian was there, too, but Melody Pond was nearly ten. Too big for mummy dearest to hold her hand, too old for child’s play. She had but one bullet; if she failed to procure a deer with that one bullet, there would be Consequences. Capital-C Consequences.

She wore her good-luck necklace, though: a large, round pendant she’d been given by Kovarian as a gesture of good faith. Of course, she didn’t know it was a camera. She just thought it was a pretty gift. No one had ever given her a pretty gift before. She didn’t know her every move was being watched in real-time, and judged harshly.

Behind her, she heard a strained sound. She turned, frightened; just a few paces back, hoisted up high in a tree, she saw a tiny fawn, its fur still fresh and spotted. It was caught in a hunter’s trap, the kind that caught an unsuspecting creature in its net and held it high above the ground till morning, when the farmer would come around to find his dinner hanging there. 

It would be an easy kill, Melody thought. A very, very easy kill.

But it was just a baby. Just a baby, alone in the woods without its mummy. She figured it was frightened. She figured it just wanted to go home, to crawl into its bed and dream of a world with no forests, with no mummy to miss, with no bear traps to keep it imprisoned in a strange, wide, and dark world.

“Just hold on,” she told it, aiming her gun at the branch holding up the net. “It’ll all be better very soon. I can help you get out of that trap. But you just have to promise me you won’t tell my mummy what I did.” 

The fawn wiggled, as if it could sense itself in the crosshairs of a little girl’s gun. But then it stopped. Animals had a sixth sense about these things. They knew a gentle soul from a hardened one, a friend from a foe. In that moment, the little fawn learned how to trust a stranger, and the little girl learned what it felt like to be selfless for the very first time. 

Melody pulled the trigger, and she hit her mark. The branch snapped and the net unraveled, sending the fawn hurtling toward the ground. It hit hard, but climbed right back to its feet, dazed yet unhurt. It spared a parting glance at Melody Pond before rushing back off into the brush. 

“You’re welcome,” she called after it. Soon, the crunch of broken branches had faded, and the woods were still. Not even the wind dared to blow.

Melody looked at her gun, and then up at the sky. Tears were beginning to brim in her eyes. She thought about running away, about picking her favourite star and letting it lead her far away from there, far away from Madame Kovarian, and far away from the punishment she knew would come. No good deed goes unpunished. That’s what mummy liked to say.

No, she thought. She would not run away. She was Melody Pond! She was brave. And perhaps more importantly, she was a skilled liar. She would tell Kovarian that she’d been out training when she’d heard a growl. She’d say she turned to see a bear! She’d say it was coming right at her, that it would have her for supper if she didn’t act fast, and that she’d shot it square between the eyes! She’d say it was too heavy for he to carry home, but she could take Kovarian to the exact spot that she’d killed it, if she’d like. And then, when there was only an empty forest floor to show for her fib, she’d say a hunter must’ve heard the shot and come along to cart it away, because there was nothing tastier than fresh meat. 

It just might’ve worked, had it not been for the camera embedded in her necklace.

River was pulled back into reality when her hold on the spirit’s wrist faltered, and its fingers fell away from her head. She wiped her cheeks, surprised to find that she’d been crying. She let out a laugh, as if it was silly to be upset about the whole thing, as if it was an antic every silly little child played.

“Kovarian beat me so harshly afterward that I couldn’t walk for days,” she sniffed, her smile wavering. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t give me a gift out of the goodness of her heart. She wasn’t good, and she hadn’t a heart.” 

_When you doubt your character, as I see in your mind you often do,_ rasped the spirit, sounding ill even through a telepathic link. _Remember the children that you have saved, on that day and on this one._

“River!” Ulra called out. “Come on!” 

Tearfully, River cupped the spirit’s hand in either of hers and gave it a final squeeze. She stood, then, turning to rush after the sound of Ulra’s voice. 

They had a promise to keep.


	9. Jailbreak

Ulra returned to the lobby, rushing immediately into Hex’s waiting arms. 

“Oh, Hex!” she cried. “I remember everything! My life was beautiful, and I remember all that beauty, and it makes me very happy! I’ll tell you all about it, but first, we’ve got more serious matters to attend to.” 

“Where’s River?” asked the Doctor. It felt, for a moment, as if both of his hearts stopped at once. 

Ulra held up the phone. 

“I’m here!” River said. “Doctor, I’ve got the sonic and I’ve unlocked all of the doors, so you can get out. Ulra knows of a place in the woods where the power lines are buried. She can take you there, and you can sever them, so Tom can’t just capture the creatures all over again. But first, I have to help the captive spirits back into their realm, or they’ll die when the power is cut.” 

“How will you do that!?” the Doctor asked her. 

“Carefully! Gracefully! Quickly! Trust me, Doctor, I can do it! But Tom will start to notice as the stasis chambers are destroyed, because the manor will start losing all its power.” 

Wary, he ran a hand over his face. “Okay. I trust you, and I know you can do it. But some of us will have to distract Tom, then, so he doesn’t go after you, River, or follow us into the woods. We’ll have to split up into teams. Ulra and Oscar, you two go for the forest, find the power lines, and cut them when River gives you the go-ahead,” he handed Oscar the phone. “Hex, you’ve got Sontaran strength. You head down to the basement to help River get all of the creatures out of the stasis pods and back into the mirror to their realm. Max, you and I will distract Tom. We’ll stage a jailbreak, or so to speak. River, any advice on that?” 

“Ha, ha,” she teased. “Very funny.” 

“Wait a minute,” Oscar shook his head. “Max, that’s too dangerous.” 

“Trust me!” Max told him, flexing his wrists as the Doctor unlocked the cuffs. “I love these trees, Oscar, and therefore I love the creatures that live in them. If they die, they’ll never grow back! It’s like I told you earlier. What sort of crummy dendrologist would I be if I ran away from this?”

He went over and kissed Oscar firmly on the lips. “I love you,” he said. 

“I won’t say it back until you’re back here safe,” Oscar sniffed. “Don’t you dare die out there.” 

Max smiled. “I’ll be fine. The Doctor is with me.” 

Oscar looked over at the Doctor, and when their eyes met, there was a silent agreement, a treaty, a covenant. Max would be safe. Or else. 

“Are we ready?” Ulra took a moment to steady her breathing. She was excited, because for the first time, she felt like she knew herself. And she had a plan. 

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Max declared.

“Perfect,” said the Doctor. “Hex, head down and find River. Ulra, look at the stars from the window. The very bright one marks north. Which way do you have to go?” 

“Oh, I know all about the stars now!” Ulra grinned. “I once a space pilot, once! We’ve got to go east.” 

“Brilliant!” the Doctor directed them out, and after they’d vanished safely into the forest, he turned to his co-conspirator. “Max, you run off south,” the Doctor pointed him in the proper direction. “I’ll fetch Tom and tell him you ran north, and we’ll head that way. Now, we’ve lucked out, because my ship is south. Run until you find a blue box, and once you do, go inside. Don’t press any buttons, or you might end up in 1860s America right in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. It happens to the best of us. Do you understand?” 

Max felt butterflies begin to stir in his stomach. 

“Yes, Doctor. South. Blue ship. Don’t press any buttons, or Civil War.” 

“That’s a lad. Go, go!” 

And Max rushed out. 

The Doctor gave him a good head start, and then he hollered for Tom. 

The manager, holed up in his office, poked his head out of the door. 

“Has your backup arrived?” 

“No, there’s a problem!” cried the Doctor. “The murderer has escaped!” 

***

Hex arrived in the basement with an indignant huff. Of course he’d gotten tasked with the boring job. He could’ve been out in the woods destroying things. But instead, he was helping some weird, ugly alien break other weird, ugly aliens out of their weird, ugly alien prison.

It was a grave dishonour to work as a medic in the Sontaran Empire, and he saw little difference between that and what he was tasked with doing now. But for Ulra, he’d heal every last ugly, alien creature in the world. The universe, even. For Ulra, he’d move mountains. Sontarans weren’t really supposed to fall in love. Their brain wiring was all against it. But maybe he was damaged in the best way. 

“Good, you’re here!” River was rushing around the basement pulling tubes out of walls and swatting her hands through the foul-smelling smoke that resulted from it. 

“Now, a few things. First, I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t know SISL, so we’ll have to keep the chatting to a minimum. Second, exposing the spirits to our air will hurt them, but they can heal themselves once they’re back in their realm. So we’ll have to try to push the stasis chambers as close to the gateway mirror as we can before opening them up. Minimise exposure, you know. Also, touching them directly might hurt you, so try to use this!” River tossed him a tarp she’d found tucked away over a pile of useless bricks and cinder blocks. She reckoned that’s how Tom got a hold of them in the first place, once he’d learned his lesson about burns.

Hex nodded and saluted like a soldier. Something about that made River deeply uncomfortable, though she hadn’t the time to wonder why. 

***

Max had run track in school, against his own wishes. His parents had wanted a firm, sporty son, who would have the ladies swooning. Since he obviously could not do the latter, he decided to give them the former. It seemed like a fair trade-off. 

And so, when he’d run the races, he’d pretend a monster was chasing him. When he felt himself slowing down, a sharp pain in his side and a marked hammering in his chest, he imagined that the monster was getting closer, closing in on him, reaching out with jagged claws and gnashing its sharpened teeth. 

His parents had kept a display case filled with first-place trophies.

***

“Exactly how long ago were you here?” Oscar was jogging to keep up with Ulra’s stride.

“If I remember correctly, a few years.” 

“A few is not definite enough, Ulra! If it was, like, ten years, don’t you think he could’ve buried it, or moved it?!” 

“Oh, you scientists,” she tutted. “You’re always trying to equate for variables and whatnot, but do you know what variable is always constant? Male pride. Tom is no exception. He was so sure of his plan, he’d never change it up because doing so would mean admitting he didn’t get it right on the first go.” 

Oscar groaned. He couldn’t argue with that, though he wanted to.

“Also,” Ulra’s tone had changed. “I’m sorry I accused you of murder earlier.” 

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” he gave a dismissive wave. “Tensions were high, insults were flying. I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have made assumptions about Hex. I was no better than those two rich pricks then.” 

“You are better than them, because they never would’ve said they were sorry.” 

Oscar smiled. “Is this enough to make you rethink your stance on male pride?” 

“Oh, heavens no!” 

“Right,” Oscar grumbled. “I ‘spose that’s fair.” 

***

Tom was blubbering once again. Either he was a very convincing liar, or he was completely off his rockers. The Doctor really thought both might’ve been true.

“How did he escape!? I just don’t understand how something like this could happen!” 

“You know how murderers are,” said the Doctor, hardly oblivious to the subtle accusation. “Crafty buggers, yeah? And Max, he’s so skinny, his wrists just slipped right through the cuffs. The others ran off after him right away; I stayed behind to call for you.” 

“This backup of yours,” Tom was starting to run out of breath and patience. “How long does it take them to get here?” 

“Depends, really,” he said. “Could be hours. Could be days.” 

“Days!” 

“Oi, that only means we’ve got more time to find Max! And it’s not like he can get off the planet without us noticing, right? Especially considering how dark it’s gotten out here.” 

Tom grew quiet, and the Doctor, never a fan of silence, decided to fill it.

“Is something wrong with the trees? They’re not so bright anymore.” 

Tom laughed. “Oh, nothing could hurt these trees! They’re powerful, you know.” 

“Yeah,” muttered the Doctor, trying his best to hide his resentment. “I’m sure they are.”


	10. To Hope, Perchance, to Dream

River was thinking. She was thinking very hard about very important things, running equations in her head and trying to figure out the best way to move a six-ton stasis chamber across the floor. Even Hex couldn’t make it budge. It would’ve been the equivalent of throwing a truck across a football stadium. Even for a Sontaran, it was a bit of a stretch.

“Well, we could always try building a rudimentary pulley system,” she drummed her fingers against her thigh. “We haven’t many tools though, but we can make do with -- oi! Don’t walk away from me!” 

Hex had turned his back, and was making his way over toward the mirror hanging up on the wall. He reached up and removed it, leaving a rather ugly pool of glue behind on the wall. He set the mirror down on the floor at the base of the stasis chamber, crossing his arms and giving River a smug grin. 

Eyes wide and mouth agape, River was at a loss for words. She’d gotten her doctorate quicker than anyone else at her university, and she hadn’t thought to bring the portal to the spirit? Talk about a blow to the ego! 

“The warrior does not waste time in battle to think,” Hex signed to her. “The warrior acts!”

“I don’t know what you said, but shut up,” River huffed. “I would’ve thought of that eventually.” 

“By the time your tiny human brain had thought of it, the whole galaxy would’ve gone supernova.” 

“I said shut up!” 

River got on her knees and tapped the glass of the mirror, watching it jiggle. Perfect, she thought. The portal was open. 

“Now, we’ve just got to figure out how to open these pods,” she looked around the chamber for a button or a valve that would release the spirit from stasis, but it was smooth as could be, just a massive, hyperdense tube of solid glass. She pointed the sonic at it, and nothing happened.

“Think like a warrior!” Hex signed, picking up a brick from the pile and hurling it at the chamber. River ducked to avoid shrapnel, and as the spirit slipped down into the mirror, back into its own realm, one of the overhead lights promptly went out. 

Shocked, she looked at Hex, and a grin spread across her face.

“It worked! That really worked! You’re brilliant, Hex, keep doing that!” River cheered. Her competitive edge had been sufficiently rounded. “The more the lights go out down here, the brighter the trees will get outside. The power is being restored to where it belongs -- the forest!”

She lifted the mirror over toward the next pod, disconnected the pressure stabilisers, and stepped back. Hex threw another brick, and another tree spirit -- one of the smallest ones -- fell back into the portal. Another row of lights went out. 

Outside, a section of dimmed trees surged to life. 

Tom looked up with a curious expression. 

“I wonder what caused that?” He asked. The Doctor shrugged, trying very hard to keep from grinning. River was doing it! 

“I don’t know,” he lied. “I guess it’s just like you said. The trees are powerful.” 

*** 

“Here!” Ulra stopped, dropping to her knees. “I remember, Oscar, it was right here! Help me dig!” 

Without question, Oscar crouched down and helped Ulra sift through ice-cold dirt and branches. 

“We’re lucky the ground didn’t freeze over!” He told her. “We’d be properly screwed if it had!” 

“You’re right,” Ulra agreed. “You know, I suggested this place to Hex for our holiday. I wonder if part of me always knew something here needed help.” 

“It’s possible,” Oscar dug. “Maybe you can sense tree stuff, since you’re a Silurian, and--” He felt her glare, and he backtracked. “Sorry. That was probably racially insensitive.” 

“Just a bit presumptuous, but -- I found it!” Ulra shoved her pile of dirt out of the way to reveal a hatch. Her face fell. “It’s frozen shut.” 

“Ah!” Oscar rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a lighter. “I knew one day smoking would save my life!” 

“You’re a scientist, you know that isn’t true!” She chastised him, but she was grinning. “Give it here, Oscar, we’ll melt the ice!” 

*** 

The blue box really wasn’t that far away from Bluewood Manor; Max had just come the long way around.

“A police box?” Max inspected it curiously. “I was beginning to doubt that he really was the authorities at all.” He touched the door, and it opened for him. He stepped inside, and then back out. And then in again. And out. And in.

“Blimey,” he croaked, feeling suddenly quite small. The room he was looking at was at least ten times the size of the whole box. But it was there. He could touch it, run his fingers along the railings, stomp his feet on the steps. It was impossible! But it was there.

“And I’m right back to doubting he’s really the authorities!” 

***

“How far could he have gone?” Tom doubled over to catch his breath, hands on his knees. “Maybe we’ve been going the wrong way.” 

“No, no,” the Doctor assured. “He’s just quick. But I’m sure we’re onto him.” 

Another quadrant of trees lit up, their shimmering bulbs glistening in the moonlight. Tom’s face changed; it hardened into the mask of a man who knew more than he’d let on. He turned toward the Doctor and pulled a gun from his coat.

“I think you’ve been deceiving me, Doctor.” 

The Doctor held up his hands in defense. 

“Wow, Tom, I thought we were getting on very well!” 

“The joke is on you, Doctor, I’ve known you were up to something since I saw you lurking about in the employee-restricted areas of the manor,” he barked out a cruel laugh. “But I know you’re the ringleader. I’ve let you lead yourself far away from everyone else, into the remote woods, where no one will hear you scream.” 

The Doctor sighed. “I suppose the gig is up, Tom. I know you killed those people, and I know you’ve been poisoning the spirits that live inside the trees. You’ve been exploiting the beauty of the natural world for your own benefit, and that ends now!” 

Tom clicked his teeth and shook his head. “How can it end now when I’ve got you where I need you? And the rest of your little team will be lost without their leader?” 

The Doctor laughed, incredulous. “You really think it’s me?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You think I’m in charge of this whole thing? I’m flattered, Tom, really.” He sauntered around in circles with all the confidence of a man who didn’t have a gun trained on his head. “Oddly, I knew you’d think that, and that’s why we’re out here, far away from the real mastermind. She’s hard at work fixing all the things you worked so diligently to break!” More trees buzzed to life, casting a sapphire glow over the Doctor’s smug face. They were nearly all back on, shining brighter than they were when the Doctor had first arrived. “You’ll never make it back in time to stop her.” 

“No!” Tom took a step toward him, pressing the gun into his chest. “This is my life’s work. You can’t take it from me!” 

“You’ve effectively enslaved a race of people, Tom,” the Doctor’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “You’ve drained a rare and beautiful natural resource, and you hurt a lot of these spirits in the process. Not to mention the old couple you killed to protect your dirty little secret!” 

“The monsters, they don’t feel!” he snarled. “They’re like animals! You hunt animals for sport, Doctor, what’s any different here!?” 

“I don’t hunt anything for sport,” he shook his head. “No one is entitled to take a life for sport, no matter to whom that life belongs,” he began to pace. “You were playing the part of a parasite god, creating your own version of Heaven by putting those creatures through Hell. I’ve come across many people like you throughout the universe, and do you know what I’ve learned about them?” The Doctor leaned in close to Tom. “I’ve learned that they all die lonely, because the one thing you can’t buy, the one thing you can’t pull from the ground and turn into energy, is love. And love is what’s saving this forest!” 

With a dramatic, flaring gesture, the Doctor flung his arms up and pointed at a square of dark trees just as they flickered back to life. Rain was starting to fall -- it had warmed too much for snow. He could tell by the look on Tom’s face that he was caught off-guard by it all, that he hadn’t counted on River and Hex working together in the basement of the estate. He couldn’t run back there in time. Bluewood Manor would soon go dark, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

“The universe is a poet, Tom, did you know that?” The Doctor laughed at the irony, at the dejected look on the manager’s ashen face. “It put creatures so terribly ugly inside something so beautiful, and then it put something so very beautiful right back inside of those ugly little creatures, like paradoxical nesting dolls! That beautiful thing inside of them? It’s the capacity to love. To hope, perchance, to dream. The beauty of the forest is an external representation of the beauty that lives inside of them, Tom, and you were exploiting that beauty to make money.” 

“A man has to make a living!” he cried. 

“But at what cost?” 

The Doctor had made only one error, and it was an error he often made. He assumed the best in even Tom, who had shown himself to be the worst humanity had to offer. But he thought for just a short while that he might’ve gotten through to him, that he might’ve stirred some dormant synapses in his brain and snapped something moral and good back to life.

He thought this up until the exact moment Tom pointed the gun at his chest and pulled the trigger.


	11. Mercy

“That’s the last one!” River put down the brick and leaned against the wall, catching her breath amid a sea of broken glass. She held her hand out for a high give, and Hex diligently shook it instead. 

That works too, River thought. 

She pulled the sonic from her back pocket and pressed a button. 

“Ulra, Oscar, have you found the box?” 

“We’re ready when you are!” Oscar called back through the receiver. “I’m going to set the wires on fire. You should get out of there A-S-A-P, because it might trigger a system-wide meltdown if Tom’s got any fail safes in place.” 

“Roger that,” River made her way toward the exit, Hex in tow. “Give us two minutes, and then light it up!” 

“Heard and understood,” Oscar replied, looking up at the trees for what felt like the first time -- the first proper time, anyway. “Ulra, I can’t believe we actually did it!” 

Proudly, Ulra grinned. “I know! I never would’ve pictured any of us as heroes! Let alone me!” 

“You’re the best of us all, Ulra. We couldn’t have done this if you hadn’t chosen to remember.” 

Had Ulra been human, she might’ve blushed. “We all took risks.” 

And evidently, the risks weren’t over yet; a beam of ray-gun energy shot by her head, coming so close she felt its heat against her cheek. 

“Get down!” Oscar cried. 

There, standing in the shadow of tree light, was Tom. And he was holidng a gun. 

“Start the fire!” Ulra shouted. “Oscar, now!” 

“River and Hex might not be out yet!” 

“They’ll make it out! We didn’t make it this far to lose!” 

Oscar couldn’t argue with that logic. He slid across the damp ground, trying his best to dry the circuits with the sleeve of his shirt. The rain was making it all the more difficult, and the fire simply refused to start. 

“We need a new strategy!” He barked, narrowly dodging one of Tom’s blasts. 

“Just try to rip it apart!” Ulra ducked behind a tree, shutting her eyes. She’d been running on the adrenaline high of remembrance; it was starting to wear off, and she found that she was suddenly quite afraid. 

Oscar shoved his hands into the electric box and started grabbing anything and everything he could get a hold of, and pulling as hard as he could. A few things started to come loose, but it had clearly been made to prevent do-gooders from doing much good at all. 

“You stupid girl!” Tom cried, eyeing Ulra. “I thought I got rid of you all that time ago. But when I saw that you were back, I knew trouble wasn’t far off. I should’ve killed you then, but I was a coward.” 

“You took everything from me!” Ulra turned to face him. A surge of anger had reinvigorated her courage. She dodged one of his blasts; at least he was a rubbish shot. “My memories. My identity. My sense of self. I lived for years in fear of what I didn’t know. And it’s all your fault.” 

Oscar managed to wiggle something important loose, pulling out a metal tube. On it, there was a plate of glass, and an idea began to take shape in his mind. 

*** 

In the TARDIS, Max sat twiddling his thumbs. It was all perfectly normal -- aside from the impossible dimensions and strange buttons that seemed to suggest time travel -- until a hologram of the Doctor was projecting from the main computer. 

“Hi there!” It gave a pleasant wave. Hesitantly, Max waved back. “If you’re seeing this pre-recorded message, it’s because I’ve been gravely injured. Whoops! It happens. The TARDIS is a bit like a cadaver dog, the old beastie, so there’s a very good change you’re about to experience a very shaky autopilot lift-off right about...now!” 

The ship roared to life and bucked like a wild mule, tossing Max to the side. 

“What do I do!?” Max cried. 

“At this point, you’re probably shouting at my hologram asking what you should do. I can’t hear you, because I’m both dying and not actually here.”

“Right,” Max muttered.

“But to answer your question! There’s a big lever near the primary screen. Give it a pull.”

Max pulled himself to his feet and, upon finding the proper switch, pulled it as hard as he could.

“That’ll disable the shields, so when you materialise over my body, it won’t crush me. I should phase into the TARDIS before the regeneration process begins. Nothing’s worse than waking up in a strange field right after dying! Trust me, I’ve been there.” 

“Who the hell are you, Doctor!?” Max shrieked. “And what kind of life do you lead!?” 

“I’m the Doctor, and my lives are all quite exciting,” said the hologram, and it winked.

*** 

River and Hex burst out of the house, just as the walls were beginning to melt, the wood paneling dripping down itself like an ice cream cone in August.

“When Oscar said it might trigger a meltdown, I didn’t think he meant literally!” River slipped off a melted porch step and fell into the mud. Hex helped her up, motioning for her to run. In the distant forest, they could see the flash and glow of ray gun blasts.

“Oh no.” The color drained from River’s cheeks. “Let’s go!” 

*** 

It wasn’t that Tom was a bad shot. In fact, he was a very, very good shot. But it felt as though something was buzzing in the air, taking the concentrated energy of the gun and redirecting it away from his target.

“Why can’t I shoot you!?” He cried. 

“I don’t know mate, but it sure isn’t for lack of trying!” Oscar slid up against one of the wide-based trees, sitting next to Ulra. 

“River, Hex, we’ve got a problem,” he said into the phone. 

“We’re on our way!” River replied. “Is anyone hurt?” 

“Ulra and I are fine, but Max and the Doctor aren’t here.” 

Silence. He knew how frightened he was for Max. He figured River was feeling the very same terror. 

“I’ve got an idea,” Oscar whispered to Ulra. “If it goes belly-up, tell Max I love him, and that my last words were something really, really cool.” 

Oscar, still holding into the reflective tube, leapt up and spread his arms wide. 

“Over here, Tom!” He cried. “I fear my husband is dead and I want to die, too.” 

“Oscar!” Ulra cried, right as a ray gun blast soared through the air. It seemed to fly in slow motion, or maybe the world around it just sped up. But just in time, Oscar held up the mirror at just the right angle -- Max wasn’t the only one who could crunch numbers in a hurry -- and the blast was deflected down into the power chamber. The wires sizzled with a hiss of grey smoke, rising up and dissipating in the rain. 

It was a bit anticlimactic; Oscar had hoped for an explosion like the one in the the end of Die Hard, but life wasn’t ever quite as exciting as it was in the movies. Although, he did just help thwart a plot to destroy a race of tree spirits and caught a murderer in the process, and the night wasn’t even over yet. Maybe things were finally starting to measure up. 

Defeated, Tom dropped to his knees. The irony was enough to make Oscar laugh. 

“How’s that feel, eh?” Oscar cheered. “Destroyed your own bloody machine!” 

River and Hex rushed over, and Hex tackled Tom while River grabbed his gun. She pointed it directly at his head. 

“The manor is melting and the tree spirits have been returned to their own realm. It’s over, you monstrosity,” she loaded the weapon. “Now, where’s my husband?” 

The sound of the TARDIS was unmistakable as it whipped through the air, narrowly dodging tree trunks as it navigated the passageways of the forest. It docked a few paces off to the right, and River felt a wave of relief wash over her. 

But it was Max who stepped out of the box, and he was crying. 

“Max!” Oscar rushed over to him, hugging him close and pressing kisses to every part of his face he could get at. “I love you. Oh, you brave, brave bastard, you did it! It’s alright now!” 

“He’s dying!” Max buried his face in Oscar’s shoulder and wept. “A hologram popped up, and the ship...i-it drove itself to where he was laying and picked him up, and then he brought us here.” 

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” The Doctor appeared in the foyer, gravely injured with a hand pressed over one of his hearts. “Tom shot me in the heart, but he didn’t bet on me having a spare.” He looked up and smiled at River, a rare and tender smile, like the way he’s look at the face of the moon. People often likened these kind of looks to the way someone might stare at a sun, but the Doctor had done just that, and if he looked at River that way -- squinty eyes, a scrunched up nose -- she’d probably slap him.

He was so busy thinking that he’d forgotten he was meant to be thinking about standing up, and his knees buckled, sending him to the ground.

“Doctor!” River ran to him, pressing her hand against his temple. She was starting to panic, the kind of ugly, frenzied panic of a child lost in the market, or a grown up lost in the woods. “You’re burning up!" 

“River,” the Doctor took her hand in his, bringing her knuckles to his lips and gently pressing a kiss to them. “You did it. The fearless River Song.”

“I’m not fearless,” her voice broke, and so did the dam holding back her tears. “I’m terrified right now, Doctor, because I can’t lose you. You...you are the parts of me that are good. My better half.” 

The Doctor cupped her cheek and smiled weakly. 

“A very brave and wise man once said ‘I don’t want to be your better half. I want to be the person that reminds you you’re already whole, just as you are, with or without me.’” 

Lip trembling, Oscar wrapped himself around Max.

River bit back tears. “Don’t you dare talk like that! Don’t you dare, you stupid, stupid idiot, don’t you bloody dare!” 

The rain had picked up, pouring puddles into the ground. Oscar and Max, Ulra and Hex -- they held onto each other like the world would end if they let go.

“I don’t think I’m going to regenerate this time, River,” he drew a shaky breath and groaned at the sharp pain that came with it. “I think this is lights out, curtains closed, final call for drinks. We had a good go, eh?” 

She shook her head as tears slid down her cheeks, wordless in grief. 

“I love you,” said the Doctor, tears prickling in his own eyes. “Please, River, stop crying for me.” 

“I’d do anything you ask of me, my love, but I can’t do that,” she wept. “I can’t--” 

The Doctor lurched, lips parted, and a light in his eyes grew dim. His hand, still cupping River’s wet cheek, fell heavily down to his side. 

River ached. She could’ve been skinned alive and it would’ve hurt less. He was her best friend. Something inside of her quietly came undone, and without a word, she stood up, pointed the ray gun at Tom.

“You wouldn’t,” he whispered. 

“I can make a Dalek beg for mercy at the mention of my name,” River told him, her voice like ice. “Beg me." 

Tom looked up at her. "What?" 

"Beg," River repeated, nonchalant. "You want mercy? Beg for it." 

"Please," whispered Tom. Tears welled up in his eyes, big and dramatic. "Please, I don't want to die, miss!" 

"Oh, you don't?" River smiled coldly, and when that smile faded, the empty, grieving look of indifference that came in its place let Tom know his life was very near its end. She glanced over toward the Doctor's body, her eyes dampening and her jaw giving a twitch. "Well, neither did he."

And she shot. And shot. And shot. She shot him until there was nothing left to shoot, just the smell of burnt flesh and the haze of filament and cartilage in the air. She shot until her hands were shaking too badly to pull the trigger, until Oscar stepped away from Max long enough to take hold of River’s arm and hold it steady, pulling the gun from her steely grasp and tossing it far into the woods. 

“River…” Ulra reached out to her, and River yanked her hand away. She stood as still as a statue and as cold as the stone in which it was carved. She no longer wept. She didn’t scream, or cry, or run, or shout. She was numb. Numb kept her safe. It always had.

“Look!” Max cried out, pointing to a puddle near the Doctor’s chest that was beginning to strangely change. It was no longer a liquid, but a jelly-like film, and from it, a hand was rising up from the dirt, caked in a blue goo that River immediately recognised. 

_You have saved the life of my beloved,_ came a voice inside River’s head. The telepathic link was still active! _And now I shall repay the favour._

The tree spirit’s hand slipped effortlessly into the Doctor’s chest, through his shirt, through his skin, like the hand of a ghost. It took hold of his heart and it squeezed, and the Doctor sat up with a gasp. 

The spirit faded back down into the puddle before River could remember how to work her legs. 

“Doctor!” Oscar grinned, wiping his eyes. “You scared the hell out of us, mate, we thought you were a goner!” 

“Nothing can keep me down for long!” He beamed, giving his chest a firm pat. In truth, he was sure he was a goner, too, but things always tended to work out for him in a strange, mystifying way. 

“River,” he reached out to her, and with a huff, she slapped him hard across the cheek. And then she threw her arms around him and hugged him tighter than she ever had before.


	12. Sunrise

It was rare that River got to see the sunrise. She lived in a world made up of purple dusks, and she wasn’t complaining about that, really. She was a bit of a night owl herself, but living like a Cinderella story gone wrong got tiresome rather quickly. She lived her life in terms of nights that can span days, always returning home to a room with no windows just before daybreak, sleeping to kill time whose passing could only be marked by the ticking of her watch.

But today, the sun was rising over a broad and glowing forest, and River sat atop a hill watching as pink skies turned to blue. 

She’d been thinking. She did that quite a lot. Sometimes, she thought about how strange and lovely it was to know the stars as intimately as she did; if her life had been different -- normal -- the stars would’ve been only pale ivory dots in a far-off sky. The Doctor would’ve been a story her mother told her when she was a little girl -- a dream that Amelia Pond had dreamt when she was small. 

Sure, River figured she might’ve been a little better at making friends and a little worse at aiming a gun if she’d been brought up properly on Earth, but her world would’ve been limited to seven continents and five oceans. She knew she was never meant for anything quite so small.

The Doctor slipped out of the TARDIS and stretched. He’d spent the night tending to the displaced lodgers who had settled into his for a rest after the manor had melted away, just until the first transport shuttles of the morning could come and take them home. He’d come with two cups of tea and a box of biscuits. 

“You’re up early,” he told her, sitting down at her side and handing her a mug.

“I’m up late,” she corrected. “Hadn’t been to bed yet. I wanted to make sure I saw the sunrise.”

“We can see any sunrise anytime you’d like,” he tapped the side of the box. “Time travel, and all that. We can see a dozen sunrises in a row, from a dozen different planets in a dozen different solar systems, all before teatime.” 

River laughed. “But it isn’t the same as seeing one naturally. It’s like...you can buy anything online, but it doesn’t beat the thrill of finding the perfect dress in the perfect size out on a shopping trip.” 

The Doctor smiled and sipped his drink. “I suppose you’re right.” 

“I’m always right.” 

River wrapped her hands around the cup of tea, taking comfort in its warmth. Little wisps of steam rose up from its surface and swirled through the icy air, dissipating in the dewy glow of early morning. 

“Doctor, can I ask you a question?” She looked up at him, suddenly unsure. 

“I assumed you’d have more than one, given everything that happened.” 

“Questions, then? Plural?” 

“Of course. Anything you’d like.” 

“Right then. Well, to start: The story you told Ulra,” she sipped her drink to let the preface sink in. “The man with the four little children, he lost three of them. But what happened to the fourth?” 

The Doctor smiled faintly, though a muscle in his cheek seemed to spasm. “It was just a story, sweetie.” 

“But still,” River pried. “How’s it end for the fourth child? You can’t leave a story without a proper ending!” 

The Doctor took a sip of his drink and stared off into the morning sky. He was imagining that the clouds made shapes; the one he was looking at sort of reminded him of a bird. Or an airplane. The kind of airplane that dropped nuclear bombs on schools and leveled cities and ruined whatever lives in managed not to take.

“She grew up. Lived happily ever after, the end.” 

River’s brow furrowed.

“Is that the truth?” 

The Doctor sighed. He was beginning to regret his experiment with open-forum questions.

“No,” he took out a biscuit and inspected it, toying with it to give his hands something to do. “But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it? The thought of happily ever after. Some might say there’s no such thing, that there aren’t really even happy beginnings,” the Doctor smiled sadly at the sky, and then at River. “A newborn baby comes into this universe crying; have you ever wondered why? They sense their smallness, and they understand the enormity of things, the vastness of space, the fluidity of time. But what is it about that largeness, that width, that flow, that a newborn child finds so utterly horrific that they use their first breaths of life to scream?” 

“Going for drama, are you?” River chuckled, amused. “Is this an audition for a play I didn’t know about?” 

“Oi, every moment’s an audition for something! Sometimes just for the next moment, but you never know if you’re going to get the part!” the Doctor took out another biscuit and pressed it into her lips. With a startled laugh, she took a bite.

“You never do answer my questions!” 

“I always answer your questions,” he tapped her nose. “You just never like my answers.” 

“They’re rubbish answers,” River chastised, but she smiled through her harshness. She was happy, she thought. Happy he was alive, really. Annoying, and evasive, and silly, but alive, and warm, and kind. Her Doctor.

The sun continued to rise over the trees. It would rise no matter what happened on the silly planet below. River rather liked the idea of careless perpetuity, a soft-glowing sort of nihilism, but when she looked at her Doctor -- at the thoughtful crinkles under his eyes, the set curve of his jaw, the pale rose lips that smiled despite their tremble -- she realised quite suddenly she didn’t want it all to be without meaning. 

There was a part of her that was profoundly happy, and a part of her that was profoundly sad. And there was another part -- a small, oft-ignored and cobwebbed part -- that was so desperately afraid of her own impermanence in the grand, stupid scheme of things. The Doctor had looked at her like she was the universe, but she feared the day he’d no longer see stars in her eyes. 

He’d tell her that that day would never come. He’d told her once that he’d love her till every last sun in the universe went dark, till every last mountain on every last planet turned to sand, till every atom fizzed and every ocean bubbled and every apocalypse ever prophesied had rang true. And then he’d defibrillate the universe just to love her all over again. 

But he was just talking poetry then, just like he loved to do, auditioning for the next breath as he traced constellation patterns into the freckles on her shoulder. People said such silly things when the night was late enough to be early in the morning. River had a private rule to never believe anything anyone told her before 7 a.m.

She checked her watch. It was 6:59.

River reached out and took the Doctor’s hand. It was rare they did that without purpose -- usually they were running away from something and holding onto each other made them faster somehow. But now, they were holding hands and standing still. That was all the poetry she needed.

“She disappeared,” the Doctor said quite suddenly. River looked over at him, confused. 

“The little girl, the fourth child,” the Doctor laughed to keep himself from crying. “She did grow up, and she had a little girl of her own that she called Susan. But when Susan was very small, the fourth little child -- all grown up, now -- walked into the desert on Gallifrey and never came home. The end.” 

“I’m sorry,” said River. She never quite believed it was a made-up fable, but she had no way of knowing. The part of her that had been profoundly happy hoped it was, but the part of her that had been profoundly sad knew better. “Doctor, I...I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have--” 

“It’s okay,” the Doctor took her hand in his. “I told you you could ask me anything you’d like. And besides,” his smile faltered. “It’s just a story.” 

“But still,” she didn’t quite believe him. “I know you don’t like endings.” 

The Doctor brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her pale knuckles. “Things have to end, sometimes, so other things can get started. You’re right. I don’t like it. But that’s just how it has to be.”

There was an ageless, timeless grief in his eyes that could only be caused by the wisdom of some great ancient imparted upon someone who neither asked for it nor wanted it. She wanted to address it. She wanted to make it go away. She wanted to replace it with wonder or joy or excitement or delight. She just didn’t know how, and so she let him hold her. Sometimes, when all else failed, closeness was enough. Sometimes, it just had to be. 

“Can I ask you another question?” she asked after awhile.

“You can ask me anything you’d like, like I said.” 

“Are you upset that I killed Tom?” 

The Doctor thought for a moment.

“Are you upset that you killed Tom?” 

“No,” River answered right away. “He wasn’t the first person I’d ever killed; he wasn’t even the most important. He’d murdered two of the lodgers, and he’d murdered countless tree spirits in cold blood. If ever a man deserved to die, it was him. But for a moment, a terrible, horrible moment, he’d killed you. And I never want to feel what I felt then ever, ever again.” 

The Doctor inched closer to her. “What did you feel?” 

“Rage. Where there should’ve been pain or agony, there was this blind, seething rage. I could’ve ended the whole universe and I wouldn’t have felt a thing while it burned at my feet. I only would’ve been angry that it hadn’t burned hotter.” A tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away as quickly as it had come, humiliated that she’d let it fall at all. “I’m sorry.” 

The Doctor put an arm around her and pressed a kiss to her temple.

“We’re complicated, you and me,” he said softly. “Things that scare everyone else, they don’t frighten us. Things that break other people’s hearts, they just make us angry, because anger is a safer thing to feel than sadness. Anger has a purpose, doesn’t it? Break enough things, and it’ll go away,” the Doctor squeezed a biscuit so hard in his hand that it crumbled, just to demonstrate his point. 

“But sadness is directionless. Sadness is a monster that whispers horrid things and only gets louder when you try not to listen. Anger, you can act on. Anger puts you in control, and there’s nothing scarier than not being in control. But how do we act on sadness?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “We cry. We cry like infants new to this delightful horror we call experience. And that’s perfectly alright.” 

River couldn’t look at him, because she knew if she did, she’d see the tenderness in his old eyes and she’s cry just like that -- just like a child new to the world, and so very small. 

Lips pursed and shoulders squared, she managed a stiff nod. Her throat was tight, and she feared if she opened her mouth, a less-than-dignified sound might escape.

“What part are you auditioning for now?” she choked out.

The Doctor laughed. “Loving husband. Did I get it?” 

Tearfully, River nodded.

The Doctor gave her shoulder a soothing rub before standing up and sucking in a deep breath. The air tasted fresher, younger, happier. It’s amazing, he thought, the difference healthy trees could make.

Behind him, the doors to the TARDIS opened. Out walked Ulra, Hex, Oscar, and Max. 

“The transport shuttle will be coming by pretty soon!” Max gave the Doctor a parting hug. River put herself back together, stood up, and held out her hand. He shook it with pride. “It was so lovely saving the world with you.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want us to give you a lift?” River asked. “It’s not like we don’t have the time.” 

Oscar smiled and shook his head. “Nah, we like traveling the old-fashioned way. But thank you.” 

“Besides,” said Ulra. “We’ve spent most of the night trying to find the family of the couple that died. Oscar hacked the database cloud, and we learned that their names were Geoff and Gigi Faris. They had a niece back on their homeworld called Ava, and they left everything in their will to her.”

“We thought we’d go to offer condolences. Or congratulations. Whichever way it goes,” Oscar shrugged. 

“The database showed that Ava’s off-world on a humanitarian mission,” said Max. “There’s something bitterly satisfying about knowing the Faris family fortune will go to someone like her.” 

The Doctor could’ve wept. “Oh, that’s brilliant!” He turned to River. “Poetic justice!” 

Ulra looked back toward where the estate once stood. The field looked oddly barren; the ground had swallowed everything, and it hadn’t left a trace. “It’ll be hard to tell Ava that her family has died, but I hope she’d appreciate closure in the very same way I’d come to appreciate it.” 

“We tried to locate Tom’s next-of-kin,” signed Hex. “But it appears he was alone.” 

“That’s an awfully good endeavor,” the Doctor fervently shook each of their hands. “The universe needs more people like you.” 

“It might not be easy,” River warned. 

“We know,” Oscar shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Important things aren’t ever easy, eh?” 

“Right you are!” cheered the Doctor. Overhead, a transport ship had parted the clouds, and with a mighty roar, it began its descent. 

“That’s our ride,” said Oscar, gesturing up at it. “Goodbye, Doctor. River.” 

“And thank you,” Ulra hugged each of them.

“Thank you,” River smiled fondly. “We couldn’t have done all this without you. Really.” 

They shared a smile as the craft hovered above them, and soon, their faces were cast in the glow of a transport beam. Ulra waved goodbye as she dematerialised, and soon, the Doctor and River were standing alone on the grassy hillside. 

“Another day, another world saved,” the Doctor sighed, his breath caught in a silver haze. He stood at the lip of the hill and looked out at the forest, and River wondered what he was thinking about. The fourth child? Susan? Tom? Her? Or maybe he’d moved on from all of it. Maybe he was just ready for the next great adventure. He’d seen worlds end and galaxies burn. Of course he wasn’t bothered by a death or two in paradise. And if she was being honest, she was a bit numb to it, too. It wasn’t like anything good had been lost, and maybe something secretly wonderful had been gained.

A young humanitarian named Ava Faris was about to become very, very rich, and maybe the universe would become ever-so-slightly better as a result. The bluewood trees in the forest were glowing brighter than ever, and River could feel the gentle throb of contentment through the fading telepathic link she’d made with the spirit.

 _Thank you,_ whispered a voice, and then she was alone in her head one more.

She took the Doctor’s hand again and held onto it like it was something precious. He smiled -- that boyish, easy grin that told her everything was just fine, now and forever. She almost didn’t believe him, but she checked her watch, and it was nearly 7:10.

He was right about one thing, at least: Happy endings belonged in the world of fairytales and storybooks. But sometimes, when the air was fresh and the sky was blue and two people fell a little bit deeper in love, real life got pretty damn close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!! There's going to be an epilogue that'll tie it into the first part of the series, The Dancing Skies of Verath. If you're reading for the series, stay tuned! But if you're reading this as a stand-alone, congrats! You have survived 12 chapters of my terribly self-indulgent writing haha. Thanks for coming along for the ride x


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone has been stalking the Doctor and River Song as they traverse the universe on dates and adventures. Who is the Watcher, and what does he want? 
> 
> (This bit ties Death in Paradise to The Dancing Skies of Verath, and as the series goes on, the Watcher will become more of a main antagonist!)

The spaceship was clean and crisp. Tom hadn’t been on a craft like this since he’d first come to the planet almost ten years ago. He never really liked space travel. It made his head go all wobbly and his stomach feel a little queasy. But a head wobble and a nervous stomach were the absolute least of his worries right now.

“Oi!” he called, sitting up so fast it made him dizzy. 

“Settle down, not so fast!” said a blonde-haired gent, sitting cross-legged across from him. He looked like something cut from a comic book, with good cheekbones and sinister eyes that seemed to constantly contradict whatever emotion his face was aiming for. He was smiling, then, but there was a coldness in his eyes that might’ve fooled someone into thinking he’d never been happy before in his life. Tom had the feeling they’d get on just swimmingly.

“Where am I?” He asked him. “Is this some sort of intergalactic prison? Or a Hell? That bitch killed me, eh?” 

The man laughed and shook his head. “Everyone always assumes this is Hell. What’s that say about me? Do I look much like a devil? Or do you feel like you’ve sinned?” 

“This is a second chance,” a second voice affirmed. Tom turned to find a man with skin like tree bark and eyes as yellow as sunbeams. He cursed under his breath. He just couldn’t get away from the tree thing, could he?

“My name is Faj,” he held out a textured hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Tom shook it.

“Tom.” 

“I was once a general of a proud army,” Faj sighed mournfully. “But that Doctor and his wife...they inspired mutiny among my crew and took everything from me. If it wasn’t for the Watcher, here, I would’ve burned up in my ship.” 

“And I would’ve been shot to death by that psychopath,” Tom let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “I’m alive?” 

“Indeed,” said the Watcher, standing up. “I’m gathering a very special team of people, Tom, to carry out a very special and important task. I hope our relationship might be...symbiotic.” 

“Well, what sort of task?” Tom rubbed his head. He was starting to get a bit of a headache. That always happened when he was stressed. 

“The Doctor and Professor River Song,” the Watcher began to pace. “Dreadful, aren’t they?” 

“The Doctor is dead,” Tom laughed, suddenly remembering his feat. “I killed him!” 

“He’s got a nasty little habit of coming back to life,” Faj hissed. “We’ve been observing. He was...healed.” 

“Ah,” Tom’s face fell. “Of course he was.” Just his luck. 

“But this team of mine, Tom. We’re hoping to find a more...permanent solution to the problem of the Doctor’s continued existence. Killing a Time Lord is tricky. Trust me, I’d know,” the Watcher let out a mirthless laugh. “He took everything from you, didn’t he? Everything you ever loved. Everything you ever wanted. Gone, because he fancied himself capable of judging whose life was worth more.” 

Tom’s eyes had gone misty. “All my life, I cultivated that land, powering my estate with an energy source that caused no pollution, burnt no coal. And he and that girl...he and all those fools...they took it all away.” 

“They did, didn’t they?” the Watcher leaned in close, giving Tom’s hand a squeeze. His lips, curved into a neat frown, seemed to contradict the fire in his eyes. “And they ought to pay, hm?” 

“Dearly,” Tom rasped. 

“And they will,” Faj unsheathed a knife, running his finger gently along the blade. 

“I’ll do anything to help,” Tom nodded firmly. “You’ve saved my life, sir. And in return, I’ll help you end theirs.” 

“Brilliant!” the Watcher clapped his gloved hands and smiled once again. “Let's get to work, shall we?”


End file.
